Polar Night begins not with a shiver, but with an eerie dream sequence projected onto the back of the stage, accompanied by noisy, ice-shard music. Photographer Aaron Stapleton provides these surreal and solemn visuals; whether they are dreams or visions is hard to say, but their ominousness is unmistakeable. The shapes that fly up are liquid, uncertain copycats of humans, perhaps a visual cue for the play’s premise: being human means being ugly, flawed, and mercurial.
The story is of a daughter seeking out her estranged mother who has left her family for a man called Ove, who has taken her to live with him in the Arctic. The mother’s sickness is quickly revealed, adding tension to attempts at familial cohesiveness. What is forced, and what is natural? How can these roles be reassumed after so much time has passed, and to what end?
Coldness, darkness, sleeplessness and shuffling feet make up a lot of conversation, although there are some moments of back-and-forth that snowball into something stinging, with writer Nadine Flynn calling it a draw just in time before it tips into melodrama. The play is most powerful during these moments of domestic and psychological tension, even the most benign of instances: making tea, for example, bubbles up into a power struggle, or the unsettling power of raised voices in small, quiet spaces.
Words: John Vaughan.
