DramaFeaturedLondonReview

Castle of Joy – Barbican, London

Reviewer: Dulcie Godfrey

Writer and Director: Búi Dam

From the Faroe Islands comes the story of Joy, or Pól Jóhannus Poulsen, born in 1925 into a world that doesn’t understand him. Based on a true story, this imaginative work brings to life Joy’s struggles, despair and his beautiful and scrambled view of the world. Part English, part Faroese, this mix of physical theatre, storytelling, foley artistry and shadow art doesn’t need to be in one language to communicate its message. Unique, creative, and moving, Faroese theatre group Det Ferösche Compagnie’s Castle of Joy is a powerful tale of one boy’s ability to imagine and to have hope.

To Joy, the world is a tangled jumble, not a straight line. Branded as an ‘oddball’ in his small village, Joy spends his time frustrating teachers, outrunning bullies, and collecting discarded building materials to build his own jumbled castle in the hills of the fishing village where he lives. Kristina Sørensen Ougaard does the heavy lifting, embodying not only Joy but the multitude of other characters (wearied mother, angry teacher, first love) shadowed and assisted on stage by writer/director Búi Dam.

Despite the bullies, it’s a quaint existence accompanied by a tinkering piano and soft cowbells, performed live on stage and perfectly in sync by Dánjal á Neystabø. But after a violent altercation with a bully, Joy is moved to Denmark, and forced into an ‘oddball’ institution. As World War II rages, Joy and his fellow patients at the institution suffer abuse, isolation, neglect, and medical violence. Here the tinkering piano is replaced by a horrifying soundscape of drums and a cacophony of lights and shadows that animate Ougaard as she embodies the horrifying matron and her ‘boys’ who carry out the maniacal doctors institutionalised violence.

The intricate stagecraft is at the forefront of this fast-moving story. Simple lights and ingenious sets illuminate each new character in Joy’s world, performed distinctly by Ougaard. Búi Dam is seemingly present in all corners of the stage, silhouetted behind screens in terrifying shadows, creating foley artistry with props and metal work, to name just a few. The music and soundscapes go from thrilling, to dreamlike, to truly powerful in creating tension and sadness at each perfectly thought-out moment. The echoing cries of Joy in an isolation cell are just one instance of truly moving theatre-making. There are moments in the first half in which storytelling becomes slightly clunky, Ougaard weighed down by the multitude of characters and each moving part of the set. It drags the energy ever so slightly, but overall, the creative production has startling power to override these dips.

Joy suffers abuse at home, and in Denmark, but remains steady in his desire to show the world his vision, his castle. As the production resolves, we see a version of Joy’s castle on screen, built over decades, hundreds of rooms, the representative of his dream coming to fruition. Representative of Joy’s struggle for self-identity, perhaps, but the message is a profoundly moving sense of hope.

‘We are leaving reality behind, and entering into myth’ says Búi Dam, at the start of the production, alluding to the fact that little is certain about Pól Jóhannus Poulsen’s life. However, just as Joy refuses to live solely in reality, the audience of the Barbican’s Pit space suspends disbelief without question and joins Joy on his journey through a jumbled, sometimes cruel, often beautiful, world.

Unique in its championing of Faroese language and stories, and startling in its stagecraft, Det Ferösche Compagnie’s innovative Castle of Joy is a perfect example of powerful storytelling.

Runs until 2 March 2024

The Reviews Hub Score

Unique, powerful storytelling

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The Reviews Hub London is under the acting editorship of Richard Maguire. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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