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Miriam Gillinson
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Fram is a horrible muddle of a play, trying to say far too much and ultimately saying very little at all. It is an awkward hybrid of play, revue and lecture, with Tony Harrison’s writing and directing in dire need of reining in. We begin with playwright Gilbert Murray resolving to write about Fridtjof Nansen, who explored the Arctic with his ship Fram and later set about resolving Russian famine: ‘Fram and famine is the play I hope to write.’ Despite or perhaps because of these lofty ambitions Fram descends into a vague, tricksy and surprisingly dull exploration of a life that was surely anything but.
Harrison gets himself into trouble from the start, when he decides to frame this as a play within a play. We consequently get two bad plays for the price of one, with Murray introducing and then guiding us through his homage to Nansen. After unsuccessfully invoking Aeschylus’s spirit, Murray raises Sybil Thorndike from the dead to star in his National Theatre debut. Some indulgent stage trickery follows, with the actors leaving the auditorium and huge screens used to depict their journey to the National. It is a waste of time and technology and is indicative of a certain laziness to this production, masquerading as imagination.
After establishing the framework, we begin the exploration proper with lumbering, papier-maché style icebergs introduced to set the scene. Harrison’s scene selection here is odd and despite depicting an Arctic expedition, the dialogue is unforgivably dull. Rather than self-reflection and revelation, we get prolonged conversations about sleeping bags and farting. No feel for the epic scale of this challenge is generated, nor the physical exertion that Nansen and companion Johansen must have endured. Harrison’s verse only prolongs the agony, with the bland conversations drawn out further still in his quest for the rhyming couplet.
On top of this, there are a countless number of gratuitous and laboured scene changes. This gets worse in the second half, when Nansen’s expedition is dropped and the Russian famine becomes his cause. Suddenly and inexplicably the play transforms into a concentrated revue, as we are shown extended scenes of Russian ballet and opera. Harrison makes no real attempt to weave these scenes into the play proper, but the ballet does at least briefly lift this play from out the doldrums.
The actors try their best, but there’s very little for them to hold onto. Nansen is a stiff and strangely un-likeable protagonist and there’s little Britten can do to instil some warmth here. Sian Thomas has fun prancing and screeching around as Sybil Thorndike and is easily the most watchable actor on-stage. Mark Addy as Hjalmar Johansen battles through admirably and finds a natural, modern rhythm to his speech that rescues his role from the stereotype it could have easily become.
About halfway through Fram we are subjected to a jarring prophesy of global warming. With his ship powering through the ice, Nansen warns that in future years this could all be gone and the world submerged. I can’t help thinking this statement is why Harrison has been given such free reign here. Everyone is so desperate for theatre to say something meaningful about Global Warming that as long as the box is ticked little else matters. It left me feeling manipulated and disappointed – a poor reflection of both Harrison’s talents and Nansen’s achievements and a sign that Nicholas Hytner isn’t immune to political pressure after all.
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