Inspired by the life and work of Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun, performer Ulrike Quade presents the audience with the solitary figure of a woman, surround by neatly stacked piles of books, reading and making notes. A gentle blue hue illuminates the space, and she is tiny in comparison to the vast environment – a landscape of paper mounds strewn across the floor and climbing the walls around her. In the background, the sound of a Nazi rally can be heard. The woman is a researcher, her thesis subject is Hamsun. She is a young German in her thirties who simply wants to understand why Hamsun, a Norwegian literary genius, endorsed the Nazi party.

But to put it so simply does this piece of theatre a disservice. This is a story of seduction; the flawed subject speaks to his researcher, drawing her into an intoxicating journey of love, frustration, passion and the undermining dark humour of guilt. Jo Strømgren and Quade, jointly the writers of the piece with Strømgren handling direction and set design, use all the magic of theatre to animate a living environment that vividly transports us to the top of mountains and into the heart of a man at various stages in his life.

A literary giant, in more ways than one, is presented before us and deconstructed as a Freudian conflict takes place between his Id-like reckless bohemian youth and an elderly Ego, guilt ridden and withered. The three puppets of Hamsun are astonishing and Quade’s masterful control is a tour de force; subtle, forceful but never cliched, she presents a woman in love with her subject and simultaneously brings life to those in the world around her in such a manner that the lines of control become excitingly blurred.

The lighting and sound design, by Stephen Rolfe and Lars Ardal, add wondrous touches: a conflict of Self manifests in the shadows projected onto the paper walls that surround the puppeteer, and an intimate calm, emanating from both aural and visual mediums, draws us towards the piece’s sombre end. On paperThe Writer would seem little more than an average biographical tale, but in the hands of these artists it is by far one of the most inspiring pieces of theatre of the year.

www.jskompani.no / www.ulrikequade.nl / www.figurteateret.no