Reykjavik

Hampstead Theatre, 23/10/24

Credit: Mark Douet

Final rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

I had been excited for some time to go and see Richard Bean's new play (of One Man Two Governors fame), with Emily Burns directing (after particularly enjoying her Love's Labour's Lost at the RSC). But I was unfortunately left a bit disappointed with what I saw.

Less of a play, and more of a glorified storytelling exercise - this certainly had two halves to it. In the first, we're presented with a set resembling a very dreary office, overlooking the dock. The office belongs to the capitalist owner of a fishing fleet in Hull, Donald Claxton (John Hollingworth). There, we get a sense of his businessman-like mind, as we're taken through the backstory of the long-line of fisheries in his family. His father (Paul Hickey) plays a somewhat unconvincing elderly man, providing advice to his son ahead of "the walk". This, we learn, is where the business owner has to meet the widows of the fisherman who died at sea while under their employment. There are various moments that take place to interrupt and distract us from this looming significant moment - including a recording of a dead skipper's last words before his ship sinks, and the introduction of a scarily accurate priest (Matthew Durkan) who tries to encourage Donald to take a trip out to Reykjavik to help get a couple of stranded fishermen back home.

It's all relatively slow build-up for the second act, which takes a dramatically different tone to the first. The set is completely changed to become an Icelandic hotel lobby. There we meet Einhildur (Sophie Cox), who plays the role of hotel owner superbly. She is immediately sick of having the men clog up her hotel entrance, and consistently rebuffs the hopeless advances of one of the fishermen, referred to as Snacker (Adam Hugill).

But it is here where the play falters. What transpires for the entirety of the second act is all the men swapping 'ghost' stories, or at least stories that are in some way a bit haunting. It all started to get a bit painful, as one man would start recounting a tale I found myself looking at my watch and thinking, 'blimey there's still four of them to go yet'. There's a sense of heightened drama when Jack (also played by Matthew Durkan) starts to lose it with Donald and threatens to chop off his finger. But there isn't much sense of danger, and his actions are immediately waved off by others.

The lights flicker and the sound design crackles as all this unfolds. But at 3 hours long, it was just a bit too much by the end. Especially as the ending doesn't feel wholly fulfilling. I appreciated the sense of trying to do something a little different, but the comedy was pretty absent and without much drama going on, there wasn't huge amounts of joy to be found on stage.