SPECIAL NOTE: I’m in Reykjavík RIGHT NOW and will be giving updates on new performances including Nýtt eldhús eftir máli (tonight) and Ormstunga (tomorrow afternoon.)
Þjóðleikhúsið (National Theatre)
Over the last two decades a recurring topic of FITK has been Icelandic Theatre. Is it ironically appropriate in that the National Theatre building is the same age as me?
Borgarleihusið (City Theatre)
Like many aspects of Icelandic Culture, the dramatic arts have had an outsized influence in the world. Not the stage productions themselves (although the 2006 production of Pétur Gautur did play in London) but through Icelandic and world cinema and television productions. Notable actors (Ólafur Darri and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Anita Briem) and stage director Baltazar Kormákur have been part of big-budget films. Film composers Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir (who both started out in Icelandic theatre) have won numerous awards including: Golden Globes, Baftras, Emmys and even an Oscar. The first woman elected president in the world, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, was the director of the city theatre when she was elected.
I’ll list the productions I have seen in chronological order.
Þetta er allt að koma by Hallgrímur Helgason, d. Baltazar Kormákur, 2004, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main stage:
My Icelandic theatre crawling started with a bang with this wild satire of a talent-challenged performer who always believes that “Things are going great” as her life falls apart in various picturesque ways. The most inventive set I’ve ever seen in a stage play, much of it is set in a huge furry box with a multi-section floor continuously sliding back and forth. I did manage to speak with the playwright (via Zoom) twenty years later. Alas, there were no new plays from Hallgrímur on the horizon. The next production I saw was also directed by Baltazar and was, in some ways, even wilder.
Pétur Gautur (Peer Gynt) by Henrik Ibsen, 2004, Þjóðleikhúsið, Black Box stage:
One of Ibsen’s most intense plays, and it was doubly so in the intimate confines of the small ‘black box’ theatre on Lindargata. My companion and I were almost within touching distance of the actors! The fish cleaning scene (with real fish) was memorable, and they eliminated the ‘second wall’ when the fire escape double door in the back of the stage was opened and the action went outdoors - with people on the street walking by in the background! The play ended with the stage floor covered in blood, money, and ashes as the lights went out.
Frida, vida la vida… written, directed and starring Brynhildur Guðónsdóttir, 2009, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main stage:
This was a very stylized production, with Frida Kahlo’s paintings becoming a part of the set. Figures from them, most notably Óxlotl, her dog (and also the Aztec dog of the underworld), and La Catrina, the Mexican goddess of death, came alive on stage. Frida’s life, including her disfiguring accident and her stormy relationship with Diego Rivera, was told in a grim, nightmarish fashion that became frightening at times. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson was Rivera with a commensurate stature appropriately larger than life. Frida’s politics were also covered, even Leon Trotsky made a memorable appearance. That a regional Icelandic theatre would produce an original play about Frida shows what an influence her art and life has had worldwide. The Selma Hayek movie version was visually stronger, as would be expected from a Hollywood movie, but this production brought out the internal struggles of Frida in a more compelling way. The cognitive dissonance in this production was pretty high, which added to the play’s surreal quality.
Jónsmessunótt, by Hávar Sigurjónsson, 2012, Þjóðleikhúsið, Black box stage:
Kristbjörg Kjeld and Arnar Jónsson are the parents of an unruly clan meeting for a reunion on midsummer’s day. The father, who has numerous affairs over the years, is deluded in thinking that his family respects him but in reality they all know he is a philandering fraud. The set featured clever intersecting boardwalks used in numerous ways:
As the audience filed in the actors mimed as if they were a continuous loop in a DVD menu.
Rautt (Red), by John Logan, Borgarleihusið 2012, small stage:
THE Icelandic drama reviewer Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir personally recommended this play to me. Although the play was quite wordy, the context (late fifties New York art scene) and numerous instances of name-dropping in the script helped me follow the gist of the story. Mark Rothko (Jóhann Sigurðarson) and his fictional assistant (Hilmar Gudjonsson) have heated conversations about the meaning of modern art vs. pop culture:
The play’s major conceit is the real-time creation of Rothko’s art on 2x2 meter canvases. As Silja had mentioned to me earlier, Jóhann was exceptional as Rothko.
Heimkoman by Harold Pinter, 2015, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main stage:
The Homecoming is a strange two-act play which explores the dynamics of sexual power in an English family. Teddy, the eldest son, brings his “wife” Ruth home from America to the seedy house where his father, an uncle, and two other brothers live. In the version I saw, in preview, the stage had morphed into a service garage complete with operating plumbing. This sleazy psychodrama unfolded in this hyper-realistic yet surreal set. I could understand few of the words, but the emotional language of the actors was quite clear, as was the full male nudity added to the mix. In a short conversation with the woman sitting next to me (who goes to ALL the plays), I mentioned some of the more memorable plays I had seen there and her appraisals more or less matched mine. In this play, she was put off by Pinter’s 1960s sensibilities.
The Rocky Horror Show By Richard O’Brien, Borgarleihusið 2018, Main stage (lobby shown below):
This was a blockbuster hit in Iceland, with its first run selling out almost instantly. Iceland music legend Páll Óskar reprised his role as Frank-N-Furter which he had performed as a college student twenty-eight year earlier. A true extravaganza, with an intricate set design and first-rate singing actors in all the major roles. My companion and I had never seen the play (nor the film) and were blown away by the excess of it all. Special note must be made of Minnesota’s own Surfin’ Bird by the Trashmen being played during intermission—twice! Rather than have me blather on about the production anymore, here is a video of the Páll’s opening number, you can judge for yourself:
Vertu Ulfur (Be a Wolf) directed by Unni Ösp Stefánsdóttir, 2022, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main stage:
I can’t even begin to explain it, much less justify it.
The one-man stage play is based on Héðin Unnsteinsson's autobiographical narrative of the same name. It was described as a crazy journey through the “… dangerous places of the mind into a world of anarchy and despair and back again, the struggle of a man who manages to break out of the vicious cycle and manages to turn his most terrifying experience into the strength needed to change.”
This production really pushed me out of my comfort zone with its 100+ minutes of Björn Thors’ nearly nonstop monologues in Icelandic, imaginative stagecraft and his masterful emoting. I was enthralled throughout.
Why would anyone go to see a play in a foreign country, performed in an incomprehensible language? I’ve done stranger things, but not many. This production had been a rousing success, with over 100 performances seen by tens of thousands of people, including many middle-school students who were there in abundance that night:
Between trigger warnings and censorship, I can’t see that a performance as intense as this one would be allowed to have an audience of older children and young teens in the U.S.A.
The play opened with a closed curtain. A man in a suit (actor Björn Thors) stepped out in front of it with a pocket full of sand. He used the sand and a piece of chalk to draw a circular diagram of his family and its history. Out of this simple introduction came the story of his struggle with manic-depression, two hours of intense acting that enthralled me with its vivid portrayal of a man struggling with his inner demons. His body language became a sublime dance, choreography of the human spirit. The stagecraft was just as brilliant—the minimal sets were transformed again and again with its archetypal imagery: A rain shower! A forty-foot-long duvet! A vanishing road to nowhere! Evocative lighting made it visual magic.
An aside: A typical tourist, unless they happened to walk into the theatre’s box office out of curiosity about the theatre’s imposing facade, would be unaware of the miracles this venue performs on a regular basis. And if that wasn’t enough culture for one town, the city boasts of another live theatre complex of equal stature, plus several smaller companies.
Before this play started I was sitting on a bench in the outer lobby when woman came in and sat down next to me. We started talking about Icelandic theatre, she was a regular and I mentioned Hallgrímur Helgason’s Þetta er allt að koma. She had known Hallgrímur since he was three years old! She also mentioned what a great man he was—the second time I heard someone say that about him that day!
When the woman for whom my bench-mate was waiting came in she saw us sitting side by side she said to us: “Ah! Brúðkaupsbekkurinn!”
Here is the play, in its entirety, with an additional prologue:
Sjö ævintýri um skömm (Seven Fairy Tales of Shame) a play by Tyrfing Tyrfingsson, 2022, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main stage:
One recurring aim of my trips to Reykjavík is to experience experimental and off-beat Icelandic Theatre.
This production hit the target in the bulls-eye.
This play had been expanded from an earlier one-act which had been a hit in a festival setting.
Several of Iceland’s most celebrated stage and screen actors were in it, including the lead Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir (seen in the TV series Trapped!) as Ölga, Ólafía Hrönn Jónsdóttir (White Night Wedding) as Ölga’s mother Amma, the venerable Kristbjörg Kjeld as her grandmother Fanney, and Hilmir Snær (101 Reykjavík) playing against his usual leading-man-type, as an alcoholic psychiatrist who takes on a troubled client: Öğla.
The psychiatrist abhors cognitive behavioral therapy, and believes that the cure for Ögla's distress lies in finding its roots—which is shame. We follow the two of them throughout the play as she tells the doctor about seven adventures that are crucial to her dilemma, and were caused by the people who were closest to her.
The key dynamic of the work is the uneasy relationships between Ölga and her grandmother and her mother—it shows us how ‘wounds’ are inherited between generations. Playwright Tyrfing used a lot of his childhood memories for the set pieces with the grandmother. Ólafína and Kristbjörg tear into their roles with gusto, it was really a special pairing:
In Ilmar’s performance as Ögla she draws the audience in, as her character falls apart as the play progresses. She is not easy to love—on edge and confrontational, Olga is married to Hanna (Kristín Þora Haroldsdóttir), the two women have the most outrageous artificial insemination scene-gone-wrong I had ever seen:
A crucial scene of the play revolves around the relationship between Ögla and Hanna, about the paradox of the fantasy of love with love in everyday life.
Seven Fairy Tales of Shame celebrates the magic of the theater, queerness and everything that is strange, oblique and excessive in life. This was not your standard dinner theatre fare:
Sem Á Himni, 2022, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main stage:
This musical originally was a Swedish stage production and then a film. It is the story of a conductor who has a heart attack (at the podium!) and then returns to his home town to recover. There he helps out with a struggling choir and in the process everyone grows, learns, and is fulfilled. It was written as a crowd-pleaser with character stereotypes aplenty. The drama is supplied by themes of spousal abuse and small-town politics presented in almost in a check-list fashion:
Overall I found it to be well sung, but with stilted staging, especially compared to the two previous plays I had seen. I had heard from more than one person that the casting of the play was controversial in that one of the characters was a special needs man who was portrayed on stage by a ‘norm’, with no other actors even considered for the role. I could see both sides of the argument; his part was pivotal and needed an accomplished singer and actor to fill it or, conversely, they could have reached out for someone with that background. I imagine there was someone in the tight-knit Icelandic theatre community that should have been given a chance—otherwise there might not have been such a fuss. I had read in a review that the big production number (at the end of the first act) was so good that the remainder of the play suffered in comparison. If that was the play’s high point (and it was impressive) I didn’t want to see any more. I left at the intermission.
Look at the Music! 2023, Tjarnarbíó theatre:
I had never been in Tjarnarbíó before, it was an old cinema restored, seating about 250, a little gem of a venue:
A powerful set of choral music set to complement Sign Language, Look at the Music! was part of a year-long international project involving both hearing and deaf artists with poetry in Icelandic Sign Language (ITM).
The 45 minute show was excellent; the music complemented the signing perfectly. There was even a “sing-along/sign-along” at the end. And there were balloons (Yay!) Beforehand I hob-nobbed with the cultural elite over a bottle of Apelsin, a uniquely Icelandic orangey beverage that I have every time I’m here. It’s awful (shown on the table in the foreground) but I’m weak—I need it.
Ibuð 10B, written by Olaf Olafsson and directed by Baltazar Kormákur, 2025, Þjóðleikhúsið, Main Stage. The set was static, with minimal changes in the background and lighting:
This was a talky play, set in a modern apartment (Ibuð) where a group of residents gathered to forge a covenant for potential incoming refugees who might be living in their building. What started out as an exchange of pleasantries (and wine tasting) turns sour as everyone gets more drunk. When a mixed-race resident comes in with his spouse unacknowledged feelings of bigotry simmer and boil over. I’ll let an Icelandic reviewer give a deeper explanation:
There are big issues here and some are very hot, and Ólafur Jóhann skillfully weaves them together so that from the first quiet minutes, the tension in the living room grows more and more, the characters reveal themselves better and better until we have a clear understanding of how they are put together, where they come from and where they are going. The conversations are fast-paced and often very funny, you have to keep your eyes peeled when it is at its most intense. This is a dense and substantial text, brilliantly thought out and written. ~ Silja Aðalsteinsdóttir, TMM Forlagið
The near-capacity audience gave the cast multiple ovations at the end.
On an unrelated note: I did snap this pic of the old retired lighting board at rest in the upper lobby of the theatre:
Kjallarakabarett, Kjallarinn, 2022, 2025:
What better place to celebrate Halloween than in the ‘cellar’ of the National Theatre. A most welcoming and congenial atmosphere of Pulchritude and Perversion greeted this timid visitor who otherwise wouldn't dream of attending such a spectacle. The MC greeted us with the invitation/admonition “You can take photographs but no flash, please. We’ll do the flashing!” A series of bawdy skits followed and were interspersed with singing and some very titillating amusing stripteases.
40.000 Fet, Tjarnarbíó 2025:
It is always nice to see so many young people at the theatre:
In the lobby a man greeted me thinking I was someone he knew from 30 years ago. I was sorry to have disappointed him, he seemed like a nice guy.
The play was the stylized comedy about two female flight attendants and their flight crew. It was quite bawdy at times, with a serious ending addressing mortality. A nice twist was that when you entered the theatre space the actors portraying the flight attendants greeted you in character, as if you were the passengers:
Dead Air by Álfrún Rose (in English): Tjarnarbíó, 2025
Since Alfie’s dad died, he’s visited everyone’s dreams but hers. Rude. Desperate to talk to him, she uses AiR, an AI chatbot for the dead. A heartfelt, funny, and glitchy deep dive into grief, ghosts, and digital obsession.~ from the Airwaves guide
A good premise, somewhat defeated by an unintelligible voice-shifting device that Álfrún used when she was ‘streaming’ her dead father.
The hour+ performance became a litany of dysfunctional family tropes, even more disturbing because I suspect they were all true. I find it ironic that the only real dud I saw in 21 years of Icelandic theatre was in English!
Performance images by the respective theatre groups.
Chapter 13 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key
“I think that was our conversation, as nearly as one can recall a conversation when a woman talks to a man and a man to a woman, for of course the words themselves say least of all, if in fact they say anything; what really informs us is the inflection in the voice (and no less so if it is restrained), the breathing, the heart-beat, the muscles around the mouth and eyes, the dilation and contraction of the pupils, the strength of the weakness in the knees, as well as the chain of mysterious reactions in the nerves and the secretions from hidden glands whose names one never knows even though one reads about them in books; all that is the essence of a conversation - the words are more or less incidental.” ~ Halldór Laxness, The Atom Station
Of all those bloggers whom I’ve interacted with over the years, K stands apart.
In 2004 blogs were all the rage, especially so in Iceland. K was the mother (móðir) of 3-year-old twins, with a husband and a cat. Reading between the lines on her blog, it seemed to me that she was under-employed for her education and a bit lonely, missing the friends of her youth, many of whom had been scattered to the winds. Her blog was somewhat a mommy-blog, but with an additional focus on culture and her life on the ‘rock.’ I had had two young boys myself once so it was fun to follow her parenting efforts. She posted pictures of herself and her children doing things in an idyllic Flickr-fairy-tale-land. I had sent her a box of books that my boys had enjoyed when they were young. Other pictures on the blog showed her on nights out with friends; proto-selfies. She was the first blogger I met IRL (during the 2006 Iceland Airwaves) and her graciousness, charm and perceptive wit touched me. I met with her again in 2009, right after I had attended a concert so poignant that I teared up a bit. She comforted me then, and even called me later to make sure I was alright. In 2012 we met up again, this time with her new husband and young son. She was radiant: in full-móðir mode. Since that day we had fallen out of touch. Life sometimes gets in the way of our best intentions.
I was a bit early so I was already in Hlemmur (a food hall) when I spotted her walking down the street. She worked just around the corner and was on a lunch break so this would be a time-constrained affair, unlike the other occasions when we lingered over coffee. She looked great, of course. I had always felt a bit shabby sitting next to her (Professor Batty meets Eve Kendall) and getting together with her was never quite seamless. A week earlier she had misread my email for a meeting which caused her to text me from a restaurant with a “Where are you?” message when I was still three thousand miles away!
But now we were together again, in the eternal now, ordering Krösti-burgers. Taking our buzzer to a quiet table away from the main doors we began catching up. What a difference ten years made: K was now in the midst of a very painful divorce from her second husband and was a bit down. The one positive thing K had going for her though was that she had finally gotten her dream-job, working as a translator in the Icelandic Foreign Ministry. It was extremely precise and challenging work that paid well and was not without its perks (including junkets to European capitals!) I felt a twinge of guilt in imposing on her schedule. We talked a bit about the Icelandic theatre scene and she gave me the lowdown on a musical I would be seeing in a couple of days. This musical was a big thing as it was the first full-blown production since the Covid restrictions were lifted. One of the characters was on the autism spectrum, and there had been a row amongst critics about having a ‘norm’ portray him. K’s involvement with autism has been vigorous and constant over the years, active in many circles (her blog was even called Aspie Mum) and she was the narrator for a documentary film on the subject of autism in Icelandic women in 2019.
When she was a young woman (meyja) she had lived in both Iceland and abroad. She had been an au pair in France and had even won some renown for her flamenco dancing! Now, as a mature woman (kona), her life was less free. Having to raise her son while dealing with a faithless husband during an epidemic will put a damper on the most optimistic soul. I wished there was something I could have done or said to make things better for her. She had picked me up when I was down and had enriched my life in many ways but I doubted if any of my words of consolation could have much of an effect. Nevertheless, I thanked her again for taking the time to meet with me. After finishing our meal we walked back to the Foreign Ministry. She pointed out a nearby art gallery as having a good selection of artists (and indeed it did) and then she was gone.
Some friends are life-long, some friendships flare-up brightly, only to quickly burn out. Some friendships are simply a case of parallel lives, two stars adrift in the heavens, each gaining a little energy from the radiance of the other and then parting to fade away to oblivion.
Svo lít ég upp og sé við erum saman þarna tvær
stjörnur á blárri festinguni sem færast nær og nær.
Ég man þig þegar augu mín eru opin, hverja stund.
En þegar ég nú legg þau aftur, fer ég á þinn fund.
~Megas
As I was going out this morning I met my host, Björk, in the stairway. “I’m going to meet the President!” I chirped, “At Grund!”
Each year the kickoff for Iceland Airwaves is held in Grund, a senior home, with Icelandic artists performing to the crowd that consisted of seniors, Airwaves attendees, pre-schoolers, and Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, the president of Iceland. He gave a welcoming speech, honest and genuine, thanking the Airwaves attendees and, in a broader sense, all the visitors to Iceland. His speech was followed by a short set from Una Torfa, singing her songs in Icelandic, who charmed the crowd:
Then came Mugison, troubador par excellence, who wowed the assembly with his songs accompanied by guitar and accordion. At one point he asked the audience if they wanted a song in English or Icelandic, with the response firmly for the latter. He played an old song, a waltz, on accordion, that had the crowd spellbound, even some of the seniors were seen “waltzing” in their seats. The assembled group demanded an encore in which Guðni joined the throng in a singalong on the chorus.
A beautiful start to a beautiful day.
On the way to the pool I helped a woman who had lost control of a box of mandarin oranges, and she gave me one for thanks!
The pool was divine, again. I spoke with some Airwaves attendees from Slovania and then made it back home for a bit of lie-down.
My first off-venue event of the day was at Smekkleysa record store where the noise trio Osmé was grinding out metal machine music, two guitars ans a technician on various noise generators. Mesmerizing, and I had my second Kevin Cole sighting of the festival:
I left to check out a happening on a boat in the harbour with free cocoa!
On the crowded boat there was a small dog on a leash, and attached to the other end of the leash was JFDR, to whom I actually spoke—thanking her for her music and semi-apoligizing for all the Wikipedia pictures I had posted of her. She graciously said that they were alright. After my fill of cocoa I went back to Smekkleysa where the techno duo Pellegrina was playing. Kevin Cole was still there, but also Heiða of Hellvar fame who I met in 2009! Then JFDR and her husband Joshua Wilkinson came in (without a dog this time) and cuddled in a corner while techno duo Pellegrina made the most unromantic music imaginable, although they were much improved over last years Airwaves:
Then the chanteuse Sigrún came on with a series of kenning tunes with prerecorded backgrounds:
She was very affecting but I left before her set was over in order to see the band Kvikindi at the Airwave information center stage (too Many Choices!):
The lead singer appeared to be visibly pregnant (a fact which she happily acknowledged!) and she didn’t let that stop her fun. The show seemed a little packaged (“Hello, Airwaves!”) but the band was good.
I went back to my flat to gather strength for the rest of the night. After a bit of a lie-down I was putting my shoes on in the entry when Unnur, the daughter of my Airbnb hosts, came in. She was honestly delighted that I was enjoying my rooms (I suspect she may have had a hand in their decoration.)
At Fríkirkjan Sunna Margrét was performing in a power trio. Very strong songs with great arrangements made this the best surprise of the day:
Over at Gaukurinn the female-fronted group Fókus was playing hard-nosed hard rock:
I had never seen Cyber put on a full act, so I went to see them again at the IA headquarters stage. They were as fun as ever but seemed to run out of gas toward the end. All that gyrating is hard work!
Best costume award goes to Jonathan who performed at Fríkirkjan with backing tracks, very ethereal:
Konx-Om-Pax is a Glasweigan techno artist with a penchant for spewing obscenities. No picture—he wanted the stage in Iðno to be “F-n black.” When his ‘music’ began I lasted about 20 seconds before I made for the exit.
Those of you interested in exploring Icelandic culture may find that a visit to one or both of the two major theater companies in Reykjavík to be most rewarding. They aren't usually listed in most tourist guides for a couple of reasons: they are not active in the high tourist season and the plays are all in Icelandic. If you do happen find yourself in town between September and May you would be wise to check them out:
Þjóðleikhúsið, Reykjavík
Þjóðleikhúsið, the National Theater, is located in an intimidating structure on Hverfisgata, with a smaller "box" theater situated on the street behind it—Lindargata. Þjóðleikhúsið produces a mixture of plays every season, including serious drama by foreign playwrights, modern Icelandic drama, several productions for children, and contemporary Icelandic comedy. These are world-class productions with fantastic sets and brilliant direction. They feature many of the fine actors you've probably already seen in Icelandic films. The smaller Kassinn (box) venue features intimate productions and are usually somewhat "edgier". Baltasar Kormákur's 2006 production of Peer Gynt was the most intense theater experience I've ever had. The main stage offers a little more traditional fare (but only a little), Hallgrímur Helgason’s Þetta er allt að koma in 2004 was a wild ride through Icelandic consciousness.
Borgarleikhúsið
Borgarleikhúsið is the City Theater. Located on the south end of Kringland, it usually runs a little lighter in tone, with an emphasis on musicals and family fare (Mary Poppins, for example). The smaller theater offers current playwrights; on a recent visit I saw John Logan's Red (Rautt), a Tony-award winning play about the artist Mark Rothko. The theater complex is newer than the Þjóðleikhúsið and contains a vast lobby (for both venues) well worth a visit on its own.
Don’t let the language barrier prevent you from attending one of these plays. You might want to avoid overly "talky" dramas, but I've found that the expressive acting in most plays usually makes up for my lack of literary comprehension. A play you are familiar with, for example Shakespeare's Macbeth, would lose little in translation. The tickets are reasonable (4400 kronur, about $35 or £24) and while it is possible to order on line, it requires some help from Google translate. You might want to visit the box office a couple of days in advance for the performances often sell out. If you are by yourself, or can't convince your traveling partner to come along, you'll have a better chance of scoring a single ticket to a popular show. Part of any theater experience is people watching during the intermission and the Icelanders do enjoy dressing up for the occasion so dress up yourself—and you'll become part of that show! The matinees are somewhat less formal.
A big part of Iceland's appeal for me is its spoken language. Attending a play there is an opportunity to hear it at a very high level. This form of Icelandic culture, when distilled into a dramatic context, creates memories which you'll never forget.
Note: a slightly different form of this post was originally written for the I’d Rather Be in Iceland Blog.
Chapter 9 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key
I can’t even begin to explain it, much less justify it.
The stage play Vertu úlfur (Be a Wolf) is based on Héðin Unnsteinsson's autobiographical narrative of the same name.
I saw it tonight in the National Theatre (Þjóðleikhúsið). The show took me on a crazy journey through the “… dangerous places of the mind into a world of anarchy and despair and back again, the struggle of a man who manages to break out of the vicious cycle and manages to turn his most terrifying experience into the strength needed to change.” The book was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize and was made into a solo play by director Unni Ösp Stefánsdóttir.
This really pushed me out of my comfort zone with its 100+ minutes of Björn Thors’ nearly nonstop monologs in Icelandic. The stagecraft and Björn’s masterful emoting and body language enabled me to be thoroughly enthralled throughout.
Why would anyone go to see a play in a foreign country, performed in an incomprehensible language? I’ve done stranger things, but not many. What began as a whim in 2004 has become a compulsion with me: Icelandic live theatre. I lost my Þjóðleikhúsið virginity attending a performance of Þetta er allt að koma (This is all coming). My mind was blown that night; perhaps this infatuation is actually my attempt to pick up the pieces. The production I saw tonight had been a rousing success with over 100 performances seen by tens of thousands of people, including many middle-school students who were there in abundance that night:
Between trigger warnings and censorship, I can’t see that a performance as intense as this one would be allowed to have an audience of older children and young teens in the U.S.A.
The play opened with a closed curtain. A man in a suit (actor Björn Thors) stepped out with a pocket full of sand. He used the sand and a piece of chalk to draw a circular diagram of his family and its history. Out of this simple introduction came the story of his struggle with manic-depression, two hours of intense acting that enthralled me with its vivid portrayal of a man struggling with his inner demons. His body language became a sublime dance, choreography of the human spirit. The stagecraft was just as brilliant—the minimal sets were transformed again and again with its archetypal imagery (a rain shower! A forty-foot-long duvet! A road to nowhere!) Evocative lighting!
A typical tourist, unless they happened to walk into the theatre’s box office out of curiosity about the theatre’s imposing facade, would be unaware of the miracles this venue performs on a regular basis. The Reykjavík area has a population of about 200,000. And if that wasn’t enough culture for one town, the city boasts of another live theatre complex of equal stature, plus several smaller companies.
Before the play started I was sitting on a bench in the outer lobby when woman came in and sat down next to me. We started talking about Icelandic theatre, she was a regular and I mentioned Hallgrímmur Helgason’s Þetta er allt að koma. She had known Hallgrímmur since he was three years old! She also mentioned what a great man he was—the second time I heard someone say that today!
When the woman whom my bench-mate was waiting for came in she said to us: “Ah! Brúðkaupsbekkurinn!”
