Reykjavik, the hallucinatory physical theatre piece conceived, written and performed by Jonathan Young, bills itself as "a journey through the architecture of memory." The play's program also contains an essay from the neuroscientist Dr. Hugo Spiers on the complexities and mysteries of memory ("when memory is recalled, the pattern of electrical activity is recreated in the network via a process called pattern completion.") Spiers also consulted with Young on the script.
Luckily, beneath all the academic gobbledygook lies a simple but effective story - a love story. Ten years ago, Young fell in love with a woman from Reykjavik. Though she was recently divorced, had two children, and lived with her teetotaling parents, he followed his bliss and joined her in Iceland, that bleakly beautiful volcanic island in a far corner of the North Atlantic. The love story then took on another, stranger-in-a-strange-land dimension. Young neither spoke nor understood Icelandic, nor had he ever experienced midnight suns, blinding blizzards - or an ex-husband stalking his every move.
Along with an audience of about two dozen people, I donned a white jumpsuit and stood in a small white room listening to Young talk about his time in Reykjavic ("smoky city" in Icelandic). Two silent assistants and a swarm of techies aided Young, moving us around from time to time, manipulating props and video-projection. The aim was to immerse us in the life being described to us - right down to the donning of eye patches that simulated what it was like to be caught in the middle of a snow storm.
There were other, more appealing sides to Young's life in Iceland - swimming in the Blue Lagoon, studying Buddhism, reading the I Ching, and of course being with his beloved (identified only as S.) Young came to know and like Iceland and was eventually able to land a job as a postman. But the affair with S. came to an abrupt, gut-wrenching end.
Reykjavik works best when it deals honestly and boldly with love gone astray. It was the emotion of the piece - and Young's impassioned performance - that moved me - not all the malarkey about "the architecture of patterns and memory."
