It's a mark of Richard Bean's skill that he manages to wrangle salty realism, geopolitics, pitch dark humour, and a suite of ghost stories into this tale of the aftermath of a fishing trawler accident.
But this potentially unwieldy brew just about works thanks to Emily Burns' well pitched direction, and Bean's affectionate ear for the vernacular of his home town's former fishing community.
The perhaps unlikely hero is John Hollingworth's guilt-ridden trawler fleet boss Donald Claxton. It's 1976 and now he's taken over from dad William, the Cambridge educated gaffer must make the 'widow's walk' to the homes of the men who have perished.
The drowned men were all freelance so he will deliver their final pay packets, and drink tea with families who resent his privilege.
According to the programme, Burns asked Bean to add the first half, set in Donald's office, which is tonally realistic, yet largely superfluous plotwise.
Still it's a nicely observed, entertaining, often funny scene-setter. We learn about this precarious, superstitious, tightknit community as Donald deals with a sacked trawler skipper, an angry wife, a trendy vicar, and his doddering dad.
The second half sees Donald fly out to retrieve the survivors, holed up in Anna Reid's meticulously observed period Icelandic hotel. Due to idiosyncratic licensing laws the three crewmen are lacing non-alcoholic beer with the local spirit - overseen by Sophie Cox's wryly unimpressed hotel owner.
Much like Conor McPherson's The Weir things take a supernatural turn over a long, dark night as they fight, drink and tell ghost stories - alongside one of their colleagues in a wooden casket.
There's an additional spectre stalking this tale - that of the Hull trawling industry, as the Icelandic parliament vote to ban European boats from their waters, not long after joining the Common Market opened British coasts to fellow Europeans.
John Hollingworth is affecting as a decent man haunted by the responsibilities of his job, and there's a subtle Brexit resonance in Bean's authentic vision of a working class community about to be decimated by global change.
Reykjavik runs at Hampstead Theatre until November 23rd.
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