Based on the true events of the 2011 massacre on the island of Utoya in Norway, the UK premiere of Edoardo Erba’s Utoya comes to Arcola Theatre this August. On July 22nd 2011 on the Norwegian island of Utoya, a far-right terrorist massacred sixty-nine innocent students attending a socialist party Summer Camp after detonating a van full of explosives at the heart of Oslo’s government district. Six characters touched by the tragedy of that fateful day tell their stories in a series of dark but warm dialogues. The fictional characters were created through extensive research by Erba into the events aiming not to depict the attack directly but represent the pain felt universally in Norway through these imagined characters one removed from the tragedy. A searing reflection on the domestic effects of societal trauma, Utoya offers a timely reminder of the threat of far-right extremism, inviting us to consider how tragedy can both bind people together and pull them further apart.
Gunnar and Malin have sent their daughter to the camp on the island, and desperately seek to contact her. Petter and Inga, who live on the farm next-door to the perpetrator’s, realise as the news breaks that their suspicions about him were well founded. Alf and Unni, members of the Oslo police force, must decide on the best course of action in response to the attack. Across a series of tender duologues, Utoya is a cautionary tale about the threat of far-right extremism, while also touching on society’s latent prejudices, and revealing how compassion can rise to the fore in the midst of tragic events.
Director Sarah Stacey said, “Utoya is a challenging, knotty and powerful script. It is also a particularly confronting story to share at a time when the divides between us are feeling ever more unbridgeable. To me, the play is about our inability to communicate across these divides (be they political, generational, gendered or deeply personal) and what happens when they are allowed to calcify. The play shatters characters’ assumptions about what constitutes ‘us’ and ‘them’ but refuses to present a safe, comforting alternative. The challenge to an audience, therefore, is to face uncomfortable truths and to push back against them in their own lives. Utoya doesn’t provide us with a solution, but a provocation.”
