REVIEW: Ragnarok – Platform, Easterhouse

It is a damning indictment of the society in which we live when a post-apocalyptic world such as the one portrayed in Tortoise in a Nutshell and Norway’s Figurteatret i Nordland’s Ragnarok isn’t that hard to imagine: the situation in Gaza, climate change, deforestation, pollution, hunger, make it all depressingly familiar.

Taking inspiration from the catastrophic Norse end of days myth, we come to the story with our young heroes (a brother and sister), three years on and knee-deep in an end of the world scenario. Odin’s ravens Hugin and Munin communicate with our young heroine and the Celtic White Stag looms around the devastated city. The sun sits fixed and unmoving in the sky, winter the only season.

Abandoning the few family ties they have left, the siblings journey away from this dystopian world in the hope of finding a future. They battle through the lawless streets, challenging weather, endless plains, lakes, forests and wolves, trying to avoid the multitude of dangers around.

It is a story epic in ambition but miniature in scale. The stage populated with dozens of tiny, hand-crafted clay figures. The city built by the performers before our eyes. Hand-held live camera work is projected on to a great circular screen above the stage, sitting alongside pre-recorded dialogue and a live music soundtrack.

Ragnarok is an ambitious undertaking and this ambition and the artistry with which it is executed are to be lauded but it is not without fault. It is at times not an easy watch. There is no shift in pace or tone and the oppressiveness of soundtrack wears. The relentless darkness and despair, the never alleviating sense of impending doom start to take their toll on the viewer. While it aims to provide a positive message on the survival of the human spirit, the glimmer of hope at the end too little, too late, too fleeting.

Epic, ambitious, beautiful, but hard to watch.