Review from: Jacksons Lane, London, 14th March 2025
An advisory sign on the way into The Nordic Council‘s hour-long show includes, “Please be aware, this performance contains… Depiction and Theme of Alcohol Abuse”. Happily, the show’s focus is on those inebriated moments that are entertaining rather than irritating for the sober bystander to watch.
We arrive at the end of an evening that has clearly been enjoyed by three now worse-for-wear friends: Jakob Jacobsson, a tall Swede with a ponytail, stocky Bjarni Árnason from Iceland, and mandolin playing Merri Heikkilä, a Finn who sports both beard and ponytail. One of the friends, whose head is encased by a mirror ball, ambles through the stage stopping momentarily to light a cigarette and somehow start smoking it before wandering away. A sheet is pulled off a sofa to reveal a second friend lying comatose. His two friends collapse onto the sofa too and in their stupefied state one of the trio slides to the ground whilst another’s legs ending up where they shouldn’t. In the background a radio relays the first of several curious and funny snippets about alcohol that emerge throughout the show – did you know beer was banned in Iceland until 1989?
Inevitably, coffee accompanies the hangover and with it the bright idea to wrap a rope around the one remaining sleeper and float him off the sofa, introducing perhaps the lowest corde lisse act ever. As two hoist the rope higher, between swigs of coffee, the sleeper, Jacobsson, wrapped within the rope, rolls down somehow always remaining a metre above the ground. As he attempts to ascend, the rope is lowered keeping him in a state of suspended animation a metre above the ground.
The legmania on the sofa and the rope play are the first of several circus elements that are immersed, alongside playing music, singing and reciting poetry, within this account of Nordic drinking culture. Shots are knocked back, glasses thrown and switched, bottles rolled; objects played with for the happenstance frivolity of it rather than to show off virtuoso ‘bar flair’ skills. That brief period when you can impressively dance like you can’t when sober is captured in a roller-skating club passing act by the trio, led by Heikilä, in which their skating competency is accompanied by juggling as haphazard as one would expect after several drinks.
This isn’t circus that demands the audience clap technical virtuosity; instead the circus expertise is embodied in the narrative which makes for an absorbing and enriching evening.
The hour draws to a close with Jacobsson and Heikkilä, in vintage ski jackets and reflective shades, playing keyboard and mandolin to introduce Árnason, the mirror ball ‘spaceman’ in his all-in-one ski suit adorned with diabolos. His high flying but ultimately chaotic diabolo routine is one of the most original and unusual I have seen – the literal high point at the end of the party.
This imaginative and charming show was put together by the three multi-skilled friends who all studied circus at Codarts university in Rotterdam and have worked together since 2017. Häppy Hour merited a larger audience than the 70, about half the venue’s capacity, who enjoyed its one night in London.
IMAGE credit: Cosmin Cirstea