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Touching the Void: Please Don’t Ever Make Me Ice Climb

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It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Touching the Void, playing at the Duke of Yorks Theatre in London until February 29.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified of outer space. Whenever I watch a movie like Gravity, my head is usually in my lap for most of the space parts and while I hyperventilate I’m like ‘please for the love of god never ever make me go into space.’ And now, making me climb a mountain where you need to use ice axes and where as soon as you take a break you get hypothermia sounds so much worse. Do not make me do this.

That I kept my shit together (well enough) during this stress-test-gone-insane of a play to realize how well they were telling this story is a testament to just how well they did it. I feel so lucky to be, I think, one of the very very few people in the audience and maybe in the world who had nooooo idea about this true story before I saw this play. There’s a really famous documentary about the real people who did this climb and what went wrong and I guess ‘everyone’ knows about it and I knew nnnnothing about it even though it won a BAFTA. (Both works are based on a book, and I don’t want to tell you who wrote the book because that’s a spoiler and I don’t futz with spoilers.) I can’t compare the play to the documentary, as a result, but I can say that if you don’t know the story, holy wow are you in for a wild ride. And given the rest of the audience’s reaction, I’m pretty sure it will be just as gripping and impressive if you do know the story. But I am so grateful that I got to experience this thrilling theatre as a blank slate.

In 1985, Joe Simpson (Josh Williams (those are like the same name)) and Simon Yates (Edward Hayter) set out to become the first climbers to reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, a mountain climb so difficult that no one had done it and yet these two bros are like oh but we can do it and we should do the west face because it’s impossible and also we’ll climb the old fashioned way, just the two of us with no team to help us so like YEAH they’re GONNA die. The play begins with a wake post-tragedy, as Joe’s sister Sarah (Fiona Hampton) attempts to understand why her brother felt the need to do crazy bananas shit like this. I was unsure at the beginning of the ability to translate this story to the stage, because the wake start felt rough and struggled to get off on the right foot. (Also, I couldn’t help but feel anger at Joe for putting his sister through this, as well as the family we don’t see, but that’s a whole nother conversation about living your life I guess.) The super loud booming club music pounding through the theatre before showtime (and during the interval, PASS) didn’t help. That interval music is even odder considering the action that comes before it.

But rather quickly, once they started telling the story via flashback, so it seemed, and really once they started climbing (even Sarah’s climb on the chairs), it kicked off and became riveting. With Tom Miller’s direction and incredible physicality from the cast, doubts about this story’s stageworthiness dissipated.  Somehow, watching them climb onstage made for truly gripping theatre, thanks to the brilliant set design and climbing choreography. You’d think that the biggest difference between the play and the movie, and where the movie wins out, is the ability to show the actual mountain and their actual climbing. But how they recreate it on an enormous dinosaur skeleton-made-out-of-printer-paper sort of thing is mind-blowing. And sure it’s probably incredible to see all this action on the real mountain in the movie, but what they accomplished onstage is super impressive.

Williams’ physical performance in Act II is even more impressive, and I completely bought that I was watching an injured man trying to move at all. I saw his pain and suffering and it felt real. The cast overall was good, and any weakness I thought I recognized in Hampton in the beginning was just my difficulty with the opening gambit, as in Act II she and everyone really shine, even Richard (Patrick McNamee), the annoying guitar-playing dork, hitting the right notes for needed comic relief.

How the story unfolds is shocking and emotional and exciting and a surefire way to raise your blood pressure, and if you have anxiety you’ll def need to prepare yourself. But I mean all that in the best way. I still can’t believe this is a true story. And I still can’t believe people would choose to do things like this on their own volition. Please do not make me.

INFORMATION

The show is about 2 hours 20 minutes, with the first act ending at our performance at 20:37.

At the Duke of Yorks, I recommend sitting in the circle, because that’s ground level. I forgot and was in the stalls and the whole being below ground thing is no fun when you try to leave. Also, the Ladies bathroom is right next to the house right door of the circle (the same one you climb the stairs to if you’re in the front stalls). For this show especially, you want to make sure you have a clear view all the way up – do not sit in the back of the stalls.

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