This epic sweep of a play takes us from a contemporary Westminster Abbey to the Arctic ship Fram – or Forward – specially built by the famous Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen who, with his suicidal companion, Johansen, makes a bid on foot for the North Pole in the 1890s.

Though incompatible, they share a bear fur sleeping-bag through the long winter. Nansen, still haunted by Johansen’s ghost, is appointed to the League of Nations. As a figurehead of Russian famine relief in 1922, he conducts the first celebrity campaign, searching for means, however shocking, to make people care.

A major new work by Britain’s foremost theatre poet, Tony Harrison, whose many plays for the NT include The Oresteia and The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus. His long poem v. caused a celebrated national controversy.