REVIEW: THE JOURNEY TO VENICE by Bjørg Vik at Finborough Theatre 28 Feb - 25 Mar 2023

‘It’s a joy and as uplifting a night out as you’re likely to find in a theatre right now’ ★★★★★

“Are you thinking about death again?” yells Edith Tellman from the kitchen. “Yes,” cheerfully answers her 80-year-old husband Oscar in one of the most life-affirming romantic comedies around right now. Bjørg Vik’s brief, sweet, touching, funny play gets its UK premiere at the Finborough and is a treat from start to too-soon finish (the latter an attribute rare enough on its own to merit a sixth star).

Edith and Oscar Tellman are in the twilight of a long and largely happy life together, and neither is going gently anywhere but into the memory of all that made them who they are. There may no longer be the money to pay the bills or the knees to climb the mountains, but there’s nothing wrong with their imaginations, and if you have a pair of chairs to be your train and the films of your past travels, there’s nothing to stop you heading anywhere you fancy of an afternoon. And nothing to stop them taking an audience over the course of a long life of journeys taken, roads not travelled, byways explored, cul-de-sacs and railtracks to the setting sun.

Oscar’s days as a lecturer – and one with an eye for a pretty girl – may be behind him, but Edith still thrills to his recitals of their shared, loved poetry and literature (it’s hard to imagine a UK equivalent of this Norwegian play sitting an elderly couple down to marvel over the incident of the ear-rings in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot). Their physical world may have shrunk to their small apartment, denuded now of many of their treasured paintings, first editions and furniture, sold to supplement Oscar’s dwindling pension, but four walls inhibit them not a whit. Into their narrowed lives come these days not friends but only a sociable plumber (Nathan Welsh) and a haphazard home help (Charlotte Beaumont), both with their lives stretching ahead of them, commitments and mistakes already made, the optimism of the unknown future still to be explored, their youth and vitality something for the old folk to envy but also enjoy. And the vitality and youth of the older pair something for the youngsters to marvel at, too, especially in an impromptu party in Venice, where imagination makes even Havarti taste like the finest of Italian cheeses.

Tim Hardy and Annabel Leventon make the most of that rarity, two amazing parts for older actors beautifully performed, capturing the love and the one-ness of two people who know everything there is to know about each other, and also the small irritations that that brings. The pain of the loss of their one child underlies all the joy, all the shared experience of their time since that shattering event, he wishing to move on when she becomes melancholy about the grandchildren they were destined never to play with or hold. It’s beautifully staged, too, with a simple set – armchair here, table there – transformed to mountainside, a perfect Venetian trattoria, whatever, all by the power of words, sound and performance.

It’s a joy and as uplifting a night out as you’re likely to find in a theatre right now. And it’s no surprise it won Norway’s Ibsen prize – the universality and particularity of the ordinary lives of a family of no outstanding note can say more than any straining, modish play ever may.

THE JOURNEY TO VENICE by Bjørg Vik (translated by Janet Garton)

Director: Wiebke Green

Finborough Theatre    28 February to 25 March 2023

Box Office: https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/the-journey-to-venice/

Reviewer: David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, Korea, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.