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Fram at The National Theatre, 15th April 2008
Written and Directed by Tony Harrison
You know there is a problem when a theatre review begins: “The set was engrossing.”
Creative use of the space and wiz bang, National-Theatre-budget-standard effects compelled the action from the moonlit interior of Westminster Cathedral 2008 to the Arctic 1895 and back again via original footage, film and a brief, inexplicable trip to the ballet. The performers were equally strong, and the topic, the life and times of arctic explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, comfortably worthy of dissection and theatrical reproduction. It was the fusion of these parts – the text and direction – which was the ice flow which sunk Fram (taken from the name of Nansen’s boat.).
Writer/ director Tony Harrison thought Nansen’s need to be a hero, first as a North Pole racer then as an international envoy for the 1921 Russian famine, was best explored in a rhyming prose somewhere between Roald Dahl and a classical Greek play. This was delivered to the audience panto style with added overt dramatic outbursts and confronting projected images which alternated in belittling the seriousness of the material and emotionally sensationalising it. I was provoked but I doubt it was for the right reasons.
A naff projection of the narrator, Gilbert Murray (Jeff Rawle), a 19th Century translator of classical Greek plays and his muse, actress Sybil Thorndike (Sian Thomas), entering the National Theatre settled me into the idea of this being a schools production. That was until the swearing started, including a tirade of Mamet worthy f***s and a c***, still a step too far for most audiences, which made me wonder who the h*** this production was for. Jokes about ancient Greek texts even a theatre student wouldn’t get only confused me more (I don’t know many anarchic ancient Greek scholars with a passion for the history of Arctic exploration?).
I did develop a sympathy for Nansen (and I certainly learnt a lot about him over the three hours), but it was mostly concern about him turning in his grave. Desperately inviting the image of a starved victim of the Russian famine (one of Nansen’s projected slides) to throw off its theatrical pretence of death, only to have it do so with a cackle made me feel angry at Harrison rather than conveying the emotion Nansen must have felt when he took the photo to show the world . Again I was confused: Why was the audience being provoked? What was I supposed to be getting from this? The only character I really connected with was Hjalmar Johansen (the excellent Mark Addy), Nansen’s storm-darkened Arctic companion, who, like me, gave the impression he would rather be somewhere else and was unhappy about where the production was headed. He would have likened the evening to spending an Arctic winter in a shared bear skin sleeping bag with the stench of two men and Nansen’s recited poetry (another thing Fram taught me about Nansen – which made me think censored it could still be a successful schools production?).
After a random ten minute ballet which had no clear reference to anything before or after (other than getting another top stage name, Wayne McGregor, enticingly added to the programme?) and a painfully long, frustrating scene re-enacting a meeting between famine relief agencies, the interval came offering a chance to sit back and try and understand why… My companion wanted to leave but Nansen and Johansen stuck it out in the Arctic and I said damn it, we would too. Later when he had his coat over his eyes and I was repeating a mantra of ‘please stop, please stop, please stop…’ as a poet with his mouth, eyes and ears sewn up hummed for five minutes I was questioning my decision.
The long-promised Fram only appeared at the very end, half sunk in the ice (in real life it survived the arctic) and the characters of Nansen and Johansen tried, I think, to summarise what we’d just seen. It was a dramatic image, them sitting on top of the sinking ship…I’m not a theatre cretin and I wanted to get it and to enjoy it – but I just didn’t.
