Valhalla

Erm... not quite sure what’s happened here. Paul Murphy’s thematically ambitious two-hander, a story of scientific ethics set in a remote Nordic research facility, has lost one of its hands. 'SUS' star Clint Dyer has been replaced a hairs-breadth from press night by... err... Paul Murphy. On book. It’s a courageous move, presumably driven by last-minute necessity, but unfortunately it’s one that absolutely flattens the production and leaves 'Valhalla' an oddly broken and dangling thing.

A nameless couple are holed up somewhere in Scandinavia. Back in Britain violent riots tear through the cities, and there’s a disease (again nameless) ravaging the world. The man thinks he might be on the brink of a cure, but the price he may have to pay, and the price he’s already paid, might just be too great.

There are plenty of ideas flowing through Murphy’s script, from the ethics of human testing to the outer limits of genetic tampering, from post-traumatic stress to Nordic folklore and witchcraft, that in trying to say everything, it eventually resolves into very little. Neither the central relationship nor the pseudo-science is in the least bit convincing, and Murphy leaves too many questions hanging.

Carolina Main’s performance as the Woman has some real nuance and fire, and designer Katie Lias's set treads a smart line between Scandi-chic and laboratory, but with such a massive last minute change, you suspect the detail in director Jo McInnes’s production has suffered. Murphy’s performance is flat and unengaging, there’s no life in his tussles and wrangling with Lias. That spark may re-emerge as Murphy becomes more comfortable with the text, but 'Valhalla' feels like a wounded production, where so radical an operation so late into the process has almost proven fatal.