The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
A look at the new Norwegian Bliss cruise ship
NEW YORK » Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest ship, Norwegian Bliss, has begun its U.S. inaugural tour with stops in New York, Miami and Los Angeles before a christening in Seattle kicking off a season of cruises to Alaska.
The ship’s seven-day cruises to Alaska begin in June and will include one port call in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
The ship’s features include a race course for electric go-karts, laser tag, a waterslide with a tube that swooshes you along the side of the ship and an observation lounge for enjoying Alaskan scenery. It’s also got a mojito bar, cigar lounge, brew house, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville At Sea and Q Smokehouse, a Texas barbecue restaurant.
As it repositions from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it will become one of the largest ships to ever navigate the Panama Canal. Norwegian Bliss measures 41 meters wide and 333 meters long (135 by 1,093 feet), while the canal is 50 meters wide and 400 meters long (164 by 1,312 feet).
Norwegian Bliss is the largest ship in Norwegian’s fleet, with 20 decks and a capacity of about 4,000 passengers. As cruise ships go, however, at least a halfdozen other ships are larger. Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas, which also set sail this spring, is the world’s largest, with a passenger capacity of 6,680.
The hull of Norwegian Bliss features images of whales and other sea creatures designed by the artist Wyland, who is known for his depictions of marine life. an acclaimed theater director making his movie debut here. There’s still much said through the nonverbal acting of Ronan and Howle, which had long been one of the reasons McEwan says he’d thought of her for the part even when she was too young to be cast.
“Saoirse is an actor who can really give you a sense of an inner life, without having to write the inner life out for her,” he said. “There’s something about her silences. Something about the way she listens to things, as well as the way she speaks and projects. It’s very rich, rich in sort of immediate human meaning, and I think the same is true of Billy.”
Ronan said she knew from reading “On Chesil Beach,” and eventually the screenplay, that Florence would reveal much of her interior life without words, and that was more than fine with her.
“I love it. I love not having to speak,” she said. “My favorite thing, to just rely on body movement and your face instead. I think in general it’s more realistic. There’s so many situations you find yourself in where you say nothing, or you don’t express everything that’s in your head, and I love getting it out onscreen.”
It’s something the 24-year-old says she’s learned in the course of life in which she’s grown up in front of a camera.
“It’s brilliant to have this sort of secret silent language, and use that as a way of telling a story without really having to use words,” Ronan said. “I think there’s a great power that can come with it, you know? It’s a responsibility, as Spider-man would say, but you can get a real freedom when you don’t have to rely on text and you can use everything you have, your body or eyes, to tell a story.”
And while you might think the novelist and screenwriter might be a little bit attached to the words he put down, McEwan says that’s the opposite of his experience with “On Chesil Beach,” largely because of the talent of Ronan and Howle, especially during the film’s pivotal scene, shot on the titular beach.
“Our rehearsals really did concentrate on the beach scene, and I was very happy to start taking lines out simply because I could see we didn’t need them,” McEwan said. “Enough interiority was coming through in the expressions and general ability to play these roles by the two young actors.”
Ronan says she’s happy that she aged into the role of Florence, part of the transition that took her from teen roles in films such as “Hanna” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” into young adult characters such as Eilis in “Brooklyn” or Nina in a new film adaptation of the Anton Chekhov play “The Seagull” that also opened this month. Her interest in playing closer to her own age actually might have steered her away from playing her most recent signature role, she said.
“With ‘Ladybird’ it was funny,” Ronan said. “Because I had made that transition, there was a moment where I thought, ‘Oh, should I play a teenager again? I don’t know if that’s something I should go back and do.’ But it ended up being this story that, even as when we were making it, it was so relatable to everyone for so many different reasons.
“Every character was so well-written and rounded out so well that people could take a little piece of it for themselves, which I loved,” she said. “That’s all you can ever sort of ask for.”
Maybe, though McEwan has one more wish beyond that, given his deep admiration and appreciation for the young woman who’s now brought life to two of his characters.
“So very lucky for me to have had two works with her,” he said. “I hope we’ll work together again on something. Don’t know what yet, but she really is immensely, immensely gifted.” Contact Peter Larsen at plarsen@scng.com or @PeterLarsenBSF on Twitter.