Following the critically-acclaimed national tour of Plastic Figurines this spring, North West theatre company Box of Tricks returns to Liverpool Playhouse Studio with their co-production of a bold new play with songs, Narvik, by award-winning playwright Lizzie Nunnery from the 8th to the 19th September. Inspired by tales from naval veterans, and stories of her grandfather’s time in the Navy, Nunnery’s latest play brings to life a powerful story of love, guilt, heroism and betrayal.
“If I was to throw myself beneath that tide… If I was to let the water take me, ’til the cold felt like heat, like love…”
Set in World War II, Narvik tells the story of a Liverpudlian man and a Norwegian woman pulled together and torn apart by war as the events of one summer cause ripples across an ocean of time. Lizzie Nunnery explores her dual creative strands – writer and singer/songwriter – to conjure a play where music and words meet, creating a patchwork of memory and dream, truth and fantasy.
The cast features Joe Shipman (Ten Tiny Toes and The Way Home, Liverpool Everyman), Lucas Smith (Doctor Faustus, Royal Exchange; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Hallé) and Nina Yndis (Norwegian feature film Glassdukkene).
Box of Tricks’ Joint Artistic Director and co-founder Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder directs. The production will be designed by award-winning designer Maeve Black, who has been awarded this year’s annual LIPA Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Studio Design Prize for the production. Original music and songs have been composed by Vidar Norheim and Martin Heslop, who recently collaborated on the music for Bright Phoenix at the Everyman, who will perform live with Nunnery providing vocals.
Writer Lizzie Nunnery is an award-winning playwright and a successful singer-songwriter. The Swallowing Dark, produced by the Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and Theatre 503, was a finalist for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and her past work includes for the Everyman & Playhouse includes the critically-acclaimed Intemperance and Unprotected, which was awarded the Amnesty International Award for Freedom of Expression. She is currently collaborating with the Royal Exchange as part of their new ‘Exchange Hub’ initiative. Lizzie also writes extensively for B.B.C. Radio.
Lizzie Nunnery said, “After developing the show for the last two years, it’ll be so good to get in to the rehearsal room with such a talented creative team. It’s a big new challenge performing as a musician in the show and I’m really grateful for the chance to bring my music and writing together. The show’s fictionalised from true stories of WWII sailors, including some told to me by my granddad, and I hope we can communicate the incredible lengths those men were pushed to. From the start, Hannah and I wanted to create a play about war that broke away from war story clichés and delivered something more strange, gripping and surprising. Hopefully we’ve pulled it off!”
Lighting will be designed by Richard Owen (Plastic Figurines) and movement directed by Robin Guiver (War Horse, National Theatre). The play will be produced by Associate Producer Amy Fisher who has been chosen as one of the B.B.C. Performing Arts Fund’s Fellows and ‘32 ones to watch’ in 2015. Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Literary Associate Lindsay Rodden is Dramaturge.
Tickets for Narvik are available to purchase from the Playhouse and Everyman Theatre’s Box offices, by telephone on 0151 709 4776 or online at www.everymanplayhouse.com.