UK première of Ingmar Villqvist’s Helver’s Night

All credit to the Company of Angels who, with support from the University of York and the EU Cultural Programme enterprisingly staged the UK première of  Ingmar Villqvist’s piece, Helver’s Night, at the York Theatre Royal Studio.  Villqvist is the pseudonym of Jaroslaw Swierszcz, a Polish playwright, who is little known in this country – strangely there was nothing about him in the theatre programme. He certainly made an impact with this piece.  It is set in the 1940s in an apartment occupied by Carla and her adopted, mentally disordered son, Helver.  The city is apparently being taken over by fascist forces and Helver is enraptured by the militarism, the discipline and even the violence dealt out to opponents and weaklings. The central irony of the piece is that Carla encourages his participation because she considers that it represents his only chance of survival.

The play is challenging, disturbing and powerful and Kate Lynn Evans and Adam Venus gave remarkable performances, emotionally and physically.  Much of the impact of Helver’s Night was achieved through the naturalistic style of the production (director Hal Chambers, designer Zoe Squire),  a form of theatre which  is much written about but not frequently seen . As we entered the apartment’s  grim and grimy kitchen, we had to cope with a smoky atmosphere, and throughout the performance, there were the glow from fire outside, and noises of vehicles, loud stamping, battering on doors,  and cries for mercy of victims. Yes, we could feel the fright as if we were in a Warsaw apartment block when  the Nazis came searching for non-Aryans …