Theatre review: Reykjavik

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: I caught Reykjavik's final preview performance before they invite the press in.

Add Richard Bean to the ever-growing list of playwrights who really just want to write a ghost story: It's fair to say I've had mixed reactions to his plays, but while the writer's biggest hits have been with comedy, the mournful, haunted Reykjavik is probably the best of his plays that I've seen. Set in 1976, with the Cod Wars (Iceland demanding, and invariably getting, an increasingly large area of exclusivity for fishing its waters) nearing their end, the fishing industry that makes up a huge proportion of Hull's economy looks under serious threat. But for Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth,) whose company owns several boats, there's a more immediate problem: One of his trawlers has sunk in the freezing waters off Iceland, and all but four of the crew are dead. It's something all the trawlermen know is a possibility, and the city has traditions for dealing with it.

It's no secret that the wealth gap between owners and workers is huge: Claxton is considering whether to buy a huge new estate, even as he arranges for the fishermen's wages to be stopped from the moment the ship sank. But he does still have to perform a public act of contrition.

So much of the first act, set in his office, involves preparations for the Widow's Walk, in which he has to travel the city by foot, visiting the homes of all the dead men and officially giving their widows the news they already know. It's a low-key but interesting start that shows him as having a certain amount of compassion but largely accepting his superior position and relying on charm to get him through - a visit from Lizzie (Laura Elsworthy,) wife of one of the survivors she'd much rather had died with the others, almost looks like it's going to end in a seduction. But a suggestion from the new vicar, which he initially dismisses as misjudged, leads to him making a trip that gives the second act a very different feel.

So after the interval Anna Reid's dark office building has become a small hotel in Reykjavik, where the survivors are staying and Donald is picking them up in person. They include the father-figure Baggie (Matt Sutton,) who's waiting to hear if his wife has given birth to their fifth child yet; Quayle (Paul Hickey,) an Irish sailor whose spooky demeanour does nothing to dispel his reputation as a jinx; and Snacker (Adam Hugill,) whose child-like simplicity disguises his reputation as a lothario, and who's already making moves on hotel owner Einhildur (Sophie Cox.)

Much as I appreciated the first act's quiet melancholy this second one is the highlight as, reminiscent of The Weir, the six characters get drunk and take turns telling tales of ghosts, monsters and premonitions of doom, and Emily Burns' production embraces a genuinely eerie tone - Christopher Shutt's sound, Grant Olding's music, Oliver Fenwick's flickering lighting and the shadows, nooks and crannies of Reid's set all adding to the atmosphere. But there's always the suspicion that this could be a distraction from a much more corporeal threat, as Lizzie's abusive husband Jack (Matthew Durkan) has a grudge against Claxton, a violent temper and, with the likely end of his livelihood, nothing to lose.

Burns marshals the mix of storytelling, character work, tragedy and comedy - Cox's po-faced responses to the drunk, poetically-minded Englishmen are a fun contrast - and the complex politics that's always underpinning the story without overwhelming it: On the one hand the danger of the job for the fishermen (but not the people making the money off them) is never downplayed, and the industry serves as the most on-the-nose criticism of capitalism imaginable. On the other, its impending collapse was a devastating blow to Bean's native Hull with repercussions for decades (while it's still acknowledged that Iceland's dependance on fishing was even more precarious, so there's no real sense of blaming them.) Getting all this to hold together is by far one of the subtlest, most mature plays from a writer I haven't always associated with those qualities, and shows just why writers are so drawn to the ghost story as a way of exploring people's inner worlds along with their outer fears.

Reykjavik by Richard Bean is booking until the 23rd of November at Hampstead Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Mark Douet.