(Peter Crawley’s article appeared in The Irish Times, 5/26.)
He is nervous and unsettled, living alone in a new flat that grumbles with packing boxes. She is gracious and pretty as a picture. He has beer, whiskey and maybe some gin to offer. She would prefer wine. He is trying to put down roots. She has never felt rooted. So David Greig’s charming and bittersweet play begins, like a teasing will-they/won’t-they comedy, on the difference between the sexes, conducted in more earthly terms: women are from Norway, men are from Scotland.
Although Lisa (Gemma Doorly) and Seán (Karl Shiels) speak with generic Scottish accents in this co-production between Theatre Upstairs, the Cup Theatre Company and Bewley’s Cafe Theatre, Lisa claims a more distant connection. Brushing aside Seán’s polite scepticism, Lisa says she comes from Trondheim, “in a place called the Land of the Midnight Sun”. This might explain her dreamy daze.