Part of Edinburgh’s Manipulate Festival 2024, Ragnarokis a hugely entertaining, massively ambitious and highly technical show, an international co-production between Edinburgh based, Tortoise In A Nutshell, and Nordland Visual Theatre of Norway. The show which has over 1100 cue lines, to give an idea of its scale, combines hundreds of mini stick-like figures living within a mini set and captured in real time with the use of the latest technology in micro cinema, combined with live music and live video projection to create an alternative universe in front of our eyes. Here the great wolf rattles its chains, and the world snake sleeps lightly, wrapping its tail covetously around the globe. If the great wolf escapes, it will eat the sun and the moon and infect the world with pestilence and disease. If the snake awakes, Ragnarok will come. And that time is coming.
Pre-recorded audio drives the story of a young girl and her brother caught in the middle of deadly conflict. The voices are young naïve, scared and confused. This could hardly be more pertinent to the world we live in today, but as discussed in the Q & A following the show, the original ideas for Ragnarok were first hatched in 2018, first in Scotland, but with much of the development of the script and props in Norway.
The set and stage design by Guy Bishop and Arran Howie make you wonder what you are in for as soon as you take your seat. On the floor is a large circle perhaps 9 feet in diameter and 4 inches deep. Behind the floor circle is an identical circular projection screen supported in the limbs of an ancient tree, like something from Pandora. Four actors Emily Nicholl, Dylan Read, Jessica Innes and Jim Harbourne, carefully position mini buildings and towers on the floor circle which quickly takes the form of a village. An actor delicately and precisely directs a mini camera through the village. Here is the mundane, the everyday, but we also see the tensions, the conflicts and struggle to survive, just to find food. When a bomb destroys the village the circle cracks and breaks into pieces, torn asunder. Two young survivors, a brother and sister, must set off into the wilderness to try to find their grandmother’s house and hopefully find sanctuary. But on their way a dog pleads with them to be released from its chains…
A haunting beautiful live soundtrack featuring multiple instruments and voice and looping and layering by Jim Harbourne helps to build the atmosphere. Dry mist and clever lighting also play key roles.
In one particularly memorable scene a micro camera surveys fluorescent rubble, looming, glowing huge on the projection screen before alternately cutting to stick figures with flesh flailing, pinned and cut, faces contorted and grimacing whilst Harbourne squeals an almost inhuman mantra to an electronic beat. This is Picasso’s Guernica made flesh.
Part Norse Mythology fairy tale, part modern day parable this is a deeply textured and visually and musically unique production, a show not to be missed that will live long in the memory. The sheer scale and technical complexity of this undertaking (and cost!) means that I doubt you will see the like again.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 10th February 2024
North West End UK Rating: