PLAYWRIGHT and songwriter Lizzie Nunnery's new memory play with folk songs, Narvik, tells the enigmatic story of a Liverpudlian man and a Norwegian woman pulled together and torn apart by war as the events of one summer cause ripples across an ocean of time.

In their tenth anniversary year, Manchester company Box Of Tricks are on tour with University of York alumnus Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder's ensemble production, playing the York Theatre Royal Studio on Thursday night with a cast of Joe Shipman, Lucas Smith and Nina Yndis and musicians Vidar Norheim, Maz O'Connor and Joe Hirons.

Nunnery explores her dual creative strands as writer and songwriter to conjure an 85-minute documentary play where melancholic ballads meet poetic words. She duly creates a patchwork of bittersweet memory and dream, truth and fantasy in a story of love, guilt, heroism and betrayal inspired by tales of naval veterans from the North Atlantic convoys.

Two strands come together in Narvik, the first set in the present day in Liverpool where, all alone, an old man riddled with guilt falls in a basement and loses consciousness; the second set in the Second World War in Norway where a young sailor with a heart full of hope, longing and courage falls in love, only for that wartime love to be lost at sea.

"It's a fictional story inspired by real stories," says the Liverpudlian Lizzie, who performed in the original production at the Liverpool Playhouse in 2015. "My grandfather was in the North Atlantic convoys in the Second World War. He trained in Scotland where a huge number of sailors trained for the convoys that went from Scotland up the coast to Norway and on to Russia.

York Press:

Playwright, songwriter and singer Lizzie Nunnery in the 2015 premiere of Narvik

"A lot of men who were in the war didn't tell their stories for a long time and I was interested why those stories wouldn't fade. I was also fascinated by the contrast of glorious memories of being purposeful and energised and many men never having that feeling again, and yet my grandfather's horrific memories of ships of being bombed and then having to close lower decks, where men would be stuck and you could them banging on the pipes.

"Those contrasting memories had me thinking, 'how did they navigate those memories and how did those memories change them?'. I was struck by how war was not morally clear."

Developing this point further, Lizzie says: "The idea of 'the enemy' is a complex one. In war there is necessarily an exaggerated version of the enemy, and yet in the play, Jim has to confront the reality that he's not that different from the German sailors, as he hears them singing as their ship goes down."

Box Of Tricks present Lizzie Nunnery's Narvik in The Studio, York Theatre Royal, Thursday at 7.45pm; The Carriageworks, Leeds, February 28, 7.30pm and Harrogate Theatre Studio Theatre, March 14 to 18, 7.45pm and 2.45pm Saturday matinee. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Leeds, 0113 376 0318 or leeds.gov.uk/carriageworks; Harrogate, 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk