Touching The Void

Play (2018)
Based on the book by Joe Simpson
Adapted by David Greig
Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques
Apollinaire Theatre Company
Chelsea, MA
April 19 – May 19, 2024

Scenic and Sound Design: Joseph Lark-Riley; Movement Choreography: Audrey Johnson
With Parker Jennings (Sarah), Kody Grassett (Simon), Patrick O’Konis (Joe), Zach Fuller (Richard)

Climbing buddies Joe and Simon have gone off on a risky adventure to climb a major peak in the Andes of Peru. Accompanied at base camp, such as it is, actually just a couple of tents, by a non-climbing aspiring writer named Richard, they prepare for their major ascent. A major mishap occurs, Joe falls, and it’s not clear how it will turn out. Joe’s sister, Sarah, plays a significant role in the goings on from afar, and her transcendent form of involvement both indicates the metaphysical nature of what is being presented and a significant role in the outcome of the adventure.

If the above summary is a bit hazy on the details, it is meant to be: David Greig’s clever and gripping play depends on a good deal of misdirection, misapprehension and vagueness about the goings on. He does so with the intent of creating a drama that makes one catch their breath from the outset, and keeps one doing so for the duration of the play. To be sure, tales of mountaineering abound and they are gripping from the very nature of the enterprise which is innately fraught with danger and fed by seductive appeal of that danger. Greig’s play, however, takes that essential drama about mountaineering a bit further by playing up the uncertainties in this particular narrative and working astutely with it – navigating between dream, vision and fact – to intensify the drama. The result is potent, and this production in Apollinaire’s intimate Chelsea Theatre Works space realizes it brilliantly.

All the performances are very good. Parker Jennings’ Sarah has a driven and dry wit which keeps her banter with Joe and her encouragement of his pursuits going full force. As Joe, Patrick O’Konis has the most intense role and he carries it off very well, making the challenges he faces seem palpable and immediate. As Simon, Kody Grassett has a decent, Tom Hanks-like, comportment, making him the good-guy foil to Joe’s fraught condition. As well, Simon is faced with the kind of dramatic turn that undoes the good-guy persona and Grassett does a fine job with that. As Richard, Zach Fuller has an effectively pungent humor which derives from Simon’s watching the drama from the sidelines, wanting to be part of it , yet knowing that his constitution keeps him at arm’s length.

Danielle Fauteux Jacques’ direction and staging is very fine all around. The setting by Joseph Lark-Riley, which employs the usual audience seats at the template for the mountain, is highly ingenious. The fashioning of the small constructed set as a vehicle for showing Sarah what climbing is about is also clever. And the omnipresence of a lit jukebox in the corner is an effective reminder of the melding of contexts. The choreography by Audrey Johnson is also very good, with a couple of instances in which a rhythmic account of climbing techniques is used most effectively, first with a Hit hold kick kick push breathe directive, and later with a sequence that involves hopping.

Joe’s dramatic accounts of crossing ice bridges and being suspended over crevasses is highly effective and charged. And his historical account of German mountaineer Toni Kurz (1913-1936) and Kurz’s attempt to climb the never before accomplished north face of the Eiger peak in the Swiss Alps is gripping.

The play opens with Sarah playing on a jukebox The Carpenters’ 1973 hit Top Of The World, a germane, but highly ironic reference to the subject of the play, with various additional overtones about siblings and their destinies.

Some interesting facts about mountaineering get revealed along the way. Apparently, 80% of climbing accidents occur on descents. Who knew? And, supported by some informative postings in the lobby, one learns something about moraine (glacial debris) and crevasses (deep glacial cracks).

The events described in the play take place in 1985, and Touching The Void, a book about them, appeared in 1988. A film of the same name, based on the book, was released in 2003. This play was first produced in 2018.

Overall: a very astutely produced and well acted version of a cleverly written play about an already gripping subject-matter. Well worth seeing.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)