Returning to the Playhouse Studio, a space reopened in
2011 by her “Swallowing Dark”, Lizzie Nunnery here combines her stark theatrical
writing style with another strand of her work, as singer-songwriter, but Narvik
is not to be confused with a musical.
Nunnery appears onstage, along with composer/musicians
Vidar Norheim and Martin Heslop (Bright Phoenix), and all three engage in the
stage movement whilst providing the soundscape for the play. There are a small
number of folk-inspired songs, reminiscent of sea shanties, amidst a sea of
sound and colour that seeps out of the woodwork of the stage, as they use a
variety of found objects as well as traditional instruments to create their
music.
Narvik is big on atmosphere, and Richard Owen’s
lighting nuances a detailed set by Maeve Black, which makes use of every square
inch of the Studio’s performance space, ropes weaving out over the heads of the
audience.
The warp and weft of the story are the lives of Jim, a
Liverpool fisherman and Elsa, an Oslo schoolteacher, which become entangled with
those of Kenny and Lucya. The play opens with Jim, at 90, who falls and lies
calling for help. As his consciousness drifts we follow his memory back to 1940,
when Jim finds himself in Norway working as a warship radio operator with Kenny
and meets the enigmatic Elsa. So we are reminded of the involvement that the
town of Narvik had in WWII, through the lives of two people brought together and
torn apart by the conflict. He may not have a girl in every port, but Jim’s
romantic tale is far from straightforward.
Joe Shipman delivers a powerful performance as Jim,
successfully navigating the journey from youth to old age and back several times
throughout the play’s 70 minutes, although his opening scene is just a little
awkward in the writing. Lucas Smith’s bluff, pragmatic Kenny is a perfect foil
to Jim’s brittle character and Smith does a good line in smouldering behind
heavy brows. Nina Yndis, by turns coquettish and knowing, has tremendous
presence on stage, both as Elsa and as Jim’s Russian brief encounter
Lucya.
Lizzie Nunnery pays tribute to the Battles of Narvik
through the wartime memories of her grandfather, and Director Hannah
Tyrrell-Pinder finds both anger and tenderness in Nunnery’s
words.
Narvik is produced by Box of Tricks theatre in
association with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and it plays at the Studio
until Saturday 19th September.
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Nina Yndis, Lucas Smith & Joe Shipman
Image © Decoy Media
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