Direction by Alex Bird

Original Direction by Ross MacKay and Arran Howie

Tickets from £13.00

Under the gaze of the one-eyed deity, the world below is changing. A golden age of peace and prosperity – infected with avarice, hatred, and endless aggression. Winter has failed to ebb, and the sun hangs low in the sky, unmoved, as the bonds which made humanity so extraordinary begin to fade. Seeking a promised land, away from the endless hunger and frost, a young girl (Aya) and her younger brother venture forth through mountains and desolation, two in a sea of thousands displaced in a fractured world where ancient myth and contemporary truths feed into one another’s tails.

In the four years since Tortoise in a Nutshell’s Ragnarök (co-produced with Figurteatret I Nordland (Nordland Visual Theatre) and in association with MacRobert Arts Centre) was due to premiere, the piece has moved through Covid, war, and the cost of living crisis, emerging, finally, as one of the most astute productions conceived – with a steady thumb on the pulse of the world. A piece of live animation theatre which incorporates various cinematic and movement-based techniques, Ragnarok is carefully and lovingly crafted before a live audience – shifting the city-scape below into new realms, armed with an army of tiny, sculpted clay figures delicately focused on through cameras to project onto the circular eye above.

While the team’s principal surface is to re-tell Ragnarök, the Norse mythos for the end of the world, the story evolves as we swoop down to the streets below, the ravens Huginn and Muninn watching over us and the youngsters as they venture for food and safety, the growing hostility between man bubbling over around them. Foretold, as Jörmungandr, the great world serpent, ensnares the city and cracks the earth, the inescapable images of children across Gaza, Ukraine, and all over the world truly take hold as Ragnarök becomes a global piece of storytelling – one so richly entrenched in Norse mythos, that it becomes impossible not to feel the weight of centuries clamping down onto our limited lives in the contemporary.

Utilising various voices to tell the tale, Ragnarök takes a much more communal tone than initially suspected – especially given the use of object theatre and clay sculptures. Arran Howie’s circular world design parts off, offering a space of creation for Aya and her brother’s journey, showcases Tortoise in a Nutshell’s unrivalled understanding of the manipulation of scale as pebbles and small sculptures become towering mountains and endless paths through this dystopian world. All voice-over roles are performed with a degree of authenticity, rougher than the usual polished professional staging, but entirely appropriate for the show – conveying a more relatable and painful sense of emotional integrity.

Movement and sound are etched as finely into the production as the clay figures: this performance is conducted by Emily Nicholl, Dylan Read, Jessica Innes, and Jim Harbourne, who give form to likes of Jörmungandr (crafted with an insidiously effective costume), the wolf Fenrir, or (presumably) Hel through some superbly orchestrated and staged movement pieces – gentle and forthright, even in acts of destruction and pain. Jim Harbourne’s haunting soundtrack and sound design tie it back into the aethereal realms of storytelling, a paean which challenges the core of audiences’ perceptions. Simon Wilkinson’s lighting is balanced to offer a dynamic atmosphere and is non-intrusive to the projected elements. 

As Aya’s story comes closer to finality, or rather, re-birth, Ragnarök conjures this profoundly devastating emptiness and realisation in one’s gut. This tale of grim apocalyptic prophecy: of sun devouring wolves, world trees, enormous ravens, and serpents – and yet these figures of the fantastical seem more concrete and believable than the atrocities which surround the contemporary. The majesty of the Norse mythos is how in tune it is with ‘everyday folk’. Tortoise in a Nutshell not only craft a form-defining production, they bottle omnipotence and channel it right into the souls of the audience to open their eyes of ‘divine wisdom’ to recognise the world around them has a necessity for our own Ragnarök.

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