The North! The North!

Selected Critical Responses

The unassuming Christopher Harrisson welcomes his audience warmly to Summerhall.  A slight smell permeates the old lecture hall as we clamber into the aisles, and there is a distinct feeling that we have entered into a realm haunted by the past, and the knowledge of what is to come.  Our surroundings have already stripped us of comfort and familiarity by the time Harrisson begins; the bustling brightness of the Summerhall courtyard passed through only moments before already a distant memory.  A stunningly immersive world opens before us, as Harrisson leads our imaginations down a dark and twisted path.

The North! The North! is a myth of staggering beauty and depthless horror.  Inspired by the likes of Beowulf and Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, Harrisson imagines and singularly evokes a world in which the North and South of England have been split by a vast chasm.  His protagonist voyages from the pulsating, sweaty ecstasy of a city club to a land inhabited by monsters and family tragedy, where he encounters a one armed man on the road, bound by glorious purpose.  Harrisson makes spectacular use of his environment as haunting projections appear before us, never distracting from the story unfolding, only enhancing it.

Harrisson’s physicality is mesmerising: the once unassuming man shifts seamlessly from character to character, from menace to vulnerability, provoking sympathy, revulsion, belly laughs, distress, tension, hatred and sorrow at will with complete authenticity.  His attention to detail is meticulous, and the difference between what is shown onstage, what is implied and what is described blurs.  As clear as the malevolence on the Prince’s face, we can see the chasm.  We can hear the wind.  We can taste the kebab.

Intelligent, exhilarating, strikingly original and moving, I cannot recommend this play enough – along with the accompanying comic available from the Summerhall shop.

Edinburgh Festivals Magazine

IN 1985, Britain was split in two, a seismic event that created a physical north/south divide which reflected everything else going on in the dark days of Thatcherism. This is how the history books should tell it anyway, according to the young narrator of The North! The North!, Christopher Harrisson's very British slice of twenty-first century gothic. With only the adjustable drawers of a wooden cupboard, some sci-fi noir projections and a burbling electronic underscore, Harrisson conjures up a mysterious world that is part road movie, part Peer Gynt style fantasia and part dystopian Kafkaesque mythology.

As Harrisson's creation races up the motorway from the big city in the south where hedonism reigns, the phone call from his sister that prompted the move sees him fall in with a series of fantastical Burroughsian grotesques. This leads him to develop a split personality in the most interestingly earthy of ways. Sired from a generation raised on a mix of stand-up, graphic novels and underground club culture, to call this a piece of story-telling theatre doesn't really do it justice in an impressively punkish portrait of a worm that turns in an ugly world.

The Herald

Mixing together expertly crafted storytelling with animation and puppetry is no mean feat, but Christopher Harrisson has managed it with aplomb, keeping his audience rapt throughout his telling of a story set in a world where the north of England was split from the south by a great and terrible chasm forming.

Harrisson's fable is the story of a boy, living in the south, called back home after the death of his mother, where he must use his ability to glow with power to defeat his father, and his own more savage sides.

Harrisson's ability to sketch out his tale with a mesmeric ease sets him out as a modern fabulist weaving his strangely reimagined England into a strange but fascinating reluctant-hero's journey using customised animations projected across the set, onto props he shifts and moves between, while playing each of the characters.

It's a darkly twisted version of a revenge story, but with enough mythical aspects and a good dollop of humour to lift it far above the pack.

British Theatre Guide

Dark story-telling is a crowded field, particularly at the Edinburgh Fringe, so it takes genuine originality to stand out. That’s something Christopher Harrisson has in spades, with this staggeringly peculiar and consistently surprising hour of Northern gothic.

England has been rent in two, separating north from south, with the former now ruled over by the grotesque, Jimmy Savile-like Prince. Our hero is the Prince’s son, and may even be the chosen one, prophesied to destroy the evil ruler and repair the chasm forever.

It may all sound a little woolly, but thanks to Harrisson’s uniquely strange and fly-blown style, mixing brutal grotesquery with a streak of the contemporary, it’s mesmerising. As the story whirls onwards, Harrison’s hero finds himself splitting apart, too. The quest transforms into an elusive fable for the loss of cultural identity – for the split personality of a northerner turned southern.

The animation that accompanies Harrison’s story suffers a little from the technical limitations of his venue, but it’s often gorgeously morbid. Harrisson himself is a dynamic performer, spinning across the stage as he pounds his coal-black myth together until it shines like a diamond.

The Stage

"Chris has always been one of the most exceptional directors and performers we've supported. His particular skill with text has always marked him apart from many devised and physical theatre-makers. It was a no-brainer to support The North! The North! with several performances and investment. However, nothing prepared me for the quality, depth and vision of the final piece: Chris has created an intricate, original work that marks him out as one of the UK’s most exciting theatre-makers. I can't wait to see what he does next.”

David Byrne, Artistic Director

Royal Court Theatre