Speech therapy

Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this imported version has arrived at the National on its way to a prebooked run at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s bound to be a hit because it’s good fun, it gives a knotty political theme a thorough examination, and it’s aimed squarely at the ignorant.

In the early 1990s Norwegian diplomats set up ‘back-channel’ talks between the PLO and Israel. The play follows that process and it treats geopolitics like a flat-share comedy. The bickering partners are hauled in by the lordly Norwegians and forced to hammer out their differences around the table. Play-goers need have no prior knowledge of Israel and its fraught relationship with the Palestinians. Everything is laid out on a plate and the viewer is made to feel like a privileged observer at the launch of a conspiracy. Each side is guilty of subterfuge and exaggeration. The Norwegians pretend to be impartial while engaging in ‘constructive ambiguity’, i.e. the creation of false obstacles whose removal can be claimed as a victory by either party.

Toby Stephens enjoys himself playing the host, Terje Rod-Larsen, as an oily buffoon, and Paul Herzberg’s Simon Peres is an amusing study in majestic vanity. Director Bartlett Sher manages to capture the emotional temper of the talks. The delegates are all chest-thumping males who seem to adore the romance of the process, the schoolboy secrecy, the encrypted language, the hush-hush locations, the scent of power, and the awareness that history itself is present at the table. It becomes clear that the simple physical proximities, the sharing of waffles and whisky, can help to break down the barriers. Sworn enemies gradually move from mutual suspicion to grudging respect and finally to amity and friendship.