When
David Greig and Tom Morris first sat down to talk about how their respective
theatres could potentially collaborate, little did they realise the dramatic
mountain they would have to climb in order to make it happen. As the recently
appointed artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, Greig
already had an ever-expansive track record over twenty years as a playwright.
Morris
too had helped reshape the theatrical landscape, first at Battersea Arts Centre,
then with the National Theatre of Great Britain, with whom he co-directed the
international hit, War Horse, alongside Marianne Elliot. As artistic director
of Bristol Old Vic since 2009, Morris was in the midst of overseeing the second
phase of a major refurbishment of the 250-year-old theatre. The prospect of Greig
and Morris working together across both theatres was enticing, but what to do,
and how to navigate their way towards a summit that audiences of both theatres
could climb with them? As with all such artistic expeditions, this one required
a plan.
The
result of this is Greig and Morris’ staging of Touching the Void, Joe Simpson’s
best-selling memoir of his near fatal climb in the Peruvian Andes first
published in 1988, and adapted in 2003 for Kevin MacDonald’s BAFTA-winning
documentary film. Given its subject and the already iconic status of Simpson’s
story, both writer and director of the stage version knew they had to make
something special.
Judging
by the response of Morris’ production of Greig’s adaptation following its
premier in Bristol last autumn, this is something which they seem to have already
achieved. Edinburgh audiences will be able to see for themselves when it opens
at the Lyceum this month before travelling to the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The
fact that the production happened at all required a considerable leap of faith
from both its primary creatives.
“The
story is bigger than both of our theatres combined,” says Morris of his
production, in which the Royal and Derngate, Northampton and London-based arts
producers Fuel also have a stake. “I didn’t know David very well at the time we
first talked about doing something together, and because our theatres are very
similar, in that they both have quite an intimate front of stage, but can create
big stage pictures behind, it seemed like a good idea for us to collaborate in
some way.”
A
casual suggestion by Morris prompted a surprising reaction.
“I
said to David that one of the things I was thinking about doing was an
adaptation of Touching the Void, and he said that if I was doing it, then it
would very definitely be him who was writing it.”
Greig’s
response came from his own relationship with climbing.
“I
sort of knew that David was interested in climbing in some way,” says Morris,
“but hadn’t realised just how much of a crazed obsession it was for him.”
This
is borne out by at least two of Greig’s previous plays, which has either used
mountaineering as a backdrop for an inquiry into identity, as he did in Pyrenees,
or else explore the nature of climbing itself in terms of human physical
struggle. This was the case with 8000m, produced by Suspect Culture, the
company headed by Greig with director Graham Eatough. Other writers too hit the
trail, with Alan Wilkins’s play, The Nest, setting out its store in a
storm-bound Highland bothy brim-full of Munro-baggers.
In
terms of a broader look at explorers beyond pure climbing, going way back, the
Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh’s production of German playwright Manfred Karge’s
modern classic, Conquest of the South Pole, saw a gang of unemployed youths put
some kind of meaning into their lives by role-playing Norwegian adventurer
Roald Amundsen’s trip to the Earth’s southernmost point.
It
was Greig’s first-hand experience of the climbing community that gave him and
Morris a way in to putting Touching the Void onstage without having to be
literal.
“It’s
raw story-telling,” says Morris. “The antagonist here is really the mountain, and
I think it’s wholly appropriate for theatre to try and tell a story that’s
impossible to tell. Joe Simpson is a really good story-teller, but he’s quite
an isolated story-teller, so we needed to come up with a device that allowed us
to get to the centre of the story.
“When
David goes climbing he hangs out at a place called the Clachan Inn,” says
Morris, referring to Scotland’s oldest pub, which is a gateway of sorts for
anyone walking the West Highland Way. “The mythology goes that it’s full of
climbers telling stories about the extremes of their experiences. We looked at
that, and we also looked at one of the relationships Joe Simpson does write
about, which is with his sister. Both of those things gave us the language for
the piece.
“As
anyone who’s seen the film or read the book will know, there are two moments in
the story which are crucial, and they’re the moments that make you go, what
would I do? There’s a moment where Simpson has a choice, and that’s where it
really starts to resonate with the audience. What choice do we make in our own
lives so they’re enriched? And what happens if we make the wrong choice? And
that’s the job of theatre, to examine that uncertainty and that question, and
to look at that tiny moment of danger and what we have to do to protect
ourselves.’
How
all this is done onstage remains to be seen. It won’t, however, be replicating
what’s already been done.
“The
film is great,” says Morris, “but we can’t reproduce its photographic language,
and the book is great, but we can’t just reproduce that, so what are we going
to do? We’re wanting to give the audience the experience of being on a
mountain. Jon Nicholls’ musical score is my biggest weapon in that respect.
When it works, the audience come out exhausted. It’s almost like they’ve had a
physical work-out themselves just from watching the show. We wanted to have
elements of a purely visceral experience to try and get an idea of what it must
be like for climbers. Once the audience have experienced that, it goes some way
to helping them understand just how remarkable what Joe Simpson did on that
mountain was.”
Touching
the Void, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, January 24-February 16.
The Herald, January 8th 2019
ends
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