Utoya
17 August 2024
Arcola Theatre
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
Utoya, currently playing at the Arcola theatre until 31 August, is an exploration of societal trauma and its effects on individuals. Set during the 2011 terror attack on the Norwegian island of the same name, it uses real events to construct fictional scenes to shine a light on how a national crisis can affect people in very different ways.
22nd July 2011, a far-right terrorist carried out two attacks in Oslo and Utoya, killing a total of 77 people. This incident is to this day the deadliest mass shooting committed by a single perpetrator worldwide, and led to some criticism of police action on the day. The play takes place from shortly before the first attack to a few days after the massacre, following three pairs of people.
Gunnar and Malin have sent their daughter to the camp and are on high alert as soon as they hear the news. Petter and Inga live next door to the terrorist on their farm, slowly realising the truth as the events unfold. Alf and Unni work at a police station close to the island and must make difficult choices throughout the attack. All six characters are played by two actors, Kate Reid and Marco Young, who expertly shift between three very different personalities each, changing their speech patterns and body language distinctly, making it easy for the audience to keep track of who is currently occupying the stage. The staging is somewhat dark and sombre, and focused on the people who were affected by the events, rather than those involved in them, which is a great choice for a bold play like this. Rather than exploiting the trauma of the victims, this play looks at the wider societal effects by zooming into individual experiences during an unthinkable tragedy.
The theatre is outfitted with plenty of background information on what happened during the massacre, and also offers after-care resources for those emotionally affected by the heavy themes of the play, in the form of an info sheet with QR code for further resources. Both of these are fantastic moves for a play that delves into dark topics based on a real event. I also applaud the decision not to name or dwell on the perpetrator, but rather on people’s reactions to his actions.
That being said, I’m not sure what this play is aiming to achieve. It does not feel like it is bringing closure or emotional support to those affected directly, neither does it delve into how perpetrators are radicalised. It seems to only touch on the motivations behind the attack peripherally. The six characters also seem quite one-dimensional, almost like caricatures of personality types with very little balance to them. Especially the men do not get a good rap in this play, with one being a raging misogynist who bullies his employees, another an emotionally distant husband who is also a sexual predator, and the third being a lazy drunkard with right-wing views. The three women portrayed do seem a little more balanced and much less problematic, but that is not enough to make the play more compelling.
Overall, it is an interesting choice to write a play around such a tragedy that could not only have been prevented but also could have been ended much sooner had the police response been more capable, and the play could have been a great emotional exploration of what societal trauma is and how it affects people, but it feels unfinished, one-dimensional, and not fleshed out enough. This is absolutely not the fault of the actors, who really give their all to make the material come to life as written, it is rather the writing itself that lets the story, or rather its characters, down.
