Be the Wolf

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.

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 (“Things Are Going Great”) written by Hallgrímur Helgason, artist/writer/cultural critic extraordinaire. My mind was blown that night; perhaps this infatuation is actually my attempt to pick up the pieces. Tonight was to be dedicated to the intense one-man play Vertu úlfur (Be the Wolf), based on the book by Héðin Unnsteinsson. 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 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!) and 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 (people-watching, of course) when woman came in and sat down next to me. We started talking about Icelandic theatre—she was a regular—and I mentioned that I had seen Þetta er allt að koma by Hallgrímur Helgason. She had known Hallgrímur since he was three years old! She told me was what a great man he was. That was the second time today I heard someone say that!

Everybody in Iceland knows everybody.

When the woman whom my bench-mate was waiting for came in she looked at the two of us sitting side-by-side and exclaimed: “Ah! Brúðkaupsbekkurinn!” (The wedding bench!”)

Search for a Dancer Index…