Utoya. Arcola Theatre.

Italian writer and director Edoardo Erba has penned close to two dozen plays and has been widely performed in his native country. His 2015 work Utoya, here in a UK premier translated by Marco Young, deals with the far right domestic terrorist attack in Norway in 2011. The horrendous events saw sixty-nine people attending a Norwegian Labour Party Youth summer camp brutally murdered.

We do not see the acts of violence and quite justifiably the terrorist is never named. Instead, the calamity is explored though the fate of three squabbling (and barely credible) couples. One wonders whether the Italian writer has quite grasped some of the nuances of Nordic culture.

Philandering high-school teacher Gunnar (Marco Young takes all the male roles) and cat-loving wife Malin (Kate Reid plays all the women) have sent their spoilt, deceitful teenage daughter to the youth camp on Utoya. She needs to learn “a faith” says dad, and “it might as well be socialism”. Mum is more worried the stroppy girl will lose her virginity to spite them. The couple, whose passive-aggressive bickering hints at hidden secrets, are consumed by fear when news of the shooting comes in. Their response? Bicker some more only notch it up a level or two. One wonders whether in real life this duo might have parked the arguing and the score-settling to focus on their missing daughter.

Transition to jobsworth local police commander Alf and sidekick Unni. Alf’s toxic masculinity, bullying, misogyny, and barely suppressed sexual harassment feel a little out of place in polite, egalitarian Norway. More Bologna then Bergen. Though close enough to Utoya to hear the sound of the shooting odious Alf refuses to act without orders from Oslo. Instead, he berates Unni’s female resolve to do something as the shots ring out as “undisciplined and emotional”.  One suspects the reality of the police response to the confusion of evolving events was different.

Transition to lazy, racist, hard-drinking farmer Petter and his ailing sister Inga. The “troll next door” has been buying suspiciously large quantities of fertiliser and has a van like the one used in the attack. Petter wants to go over and investigate but Inga insists it is not the Norwegian way. “Good morning, good evening, and show respect” is how we treat neighbours here, she says. As an ersatz take on Norwegian cultural modesty, this verges on caricature.

It is difficult to know what Erba is trying to get at Utoya. Yes, tragedy drives people apart sometimes. But just as often, as we saw recently in Southport, it pulls people together. We see plenty of dramatic friction in Utoya but precious little empathy. Young work his socks off. Reid gets the best of constant transitioning between three characters.

Writer:  Edoardo Erba (translated by Marco Young)

Director:  Sarah Stacey