Atlantica - 01.03.2002, Page 32

30 A T L A N T I C A
Twelve months after premiering in a small theatre in Akureyri,
a town of only 15,000 people located in north Iceland,
The Feast of Snails is being staged in London’s West End,
starring the venerable actor David Warner, who returns to the
English stage after a 30 year hiatus. Jón Kaldal met with
playwright Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson and director Ron Daniels.
Snails Travelling at
Lightning Speed
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It sounds like a fairy tale: a play is pre-
miered in a small Icelandic town and 12
months later it’s in the West End as a
comeback vehicle for British theatre’s lost
son, David Warner.
The Feast of Snails is Ólafur Jóhann Ólafs-
son’s second play and the first to be staged
outside of Iceland. However, the Icelandic
writer, who is also VP of Time Warner’s dig-
ital media division, is no debutant to the
international literary scene. Ólafsson’s
work has been published in 15 different
languages and his last novel, published
internationally, The Journey Home (Faber
and Faber, 2001), drew critical acclaim. The
Times described it as “a quiet and beauti-
ful novel”, and The Observer called it “a
great triumph of novelistic imagination”.
Nevertheless, it’s quite an accomplishment
to have a play premiering in the West End,
a place usually reserved for thoroughly
tested productions, written by established
playwrights.
“I thought The Feast of Snails was a play
people could watch in other places than
Iceland, as there is nothing particularly
Icelandic about the work. I showed it to
my agent and he immediately got in
touch with these producers who read it
and then decided to put it on,“ explains
Ólafsson, sitting backstage in the Lyric
Theatre, listening to the actors perform-
ing their lines onstage.
It sounds simple, but the producers stag-
ing The Feast of Snails are not small fish.
They are experienced players from the
worlds of film and theatre. At the fore-
front is American Frederick Zollo, a veter-
an stage producer both in New York and
London, with films like Mississippi
Burning and Quiz Show to his credit.
The producers say that it all happened
rather quickly. The production team set
the project in motion last summer and by
November they had secured the Lyric, the
oldest and second largest playhouse built
on Shaftesbury Avenue. They also per-
suaded David Warner to return to the
stage in Britain after 30 years of self-
inflicted exile.
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