Touching the Void
Playwright: David Greig, based on the memoir by Joe Simpson Director: Tom Morris Bristol Old Vic, until 6 October. Royal & Derngate, Northampton, 9-20 October, then on (fueltheatre.com) Running time: 2hrs 40mins (including interval) It feels “wonderfully apt”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph, that the Bristol Old Vic has reopened – following a magnificent £26m renovation project – with a staging of Joe Simpson’s memoir Touching the Void. The 1988 bestseller relays one of the most remarkable stories of endurance and survival in mountaineering history. And the Old Vic has itself “battled overwhelming odds” in recent decades to remain the country’s oldest continuously working theatre (founded in 1766). There are obvious challenges in putting mountain climbing on stage. But Touching the Void proves a triumph – artistic director Tom Morris’s finest work since War Horse. At its end “you feel as if you’ve been to the ends of the Earth without moving from your seat, experiencing the in-extremis odyssey inch by howling inch”.
I was totally gripped by this tale of “loneliness, loyalty and the overpowering desire to survive”, said Ann Treneman in The Times. Following the book and film, most will know what happened to Simpson on Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, after his climbing partner, Simon Yates, made the agonising decision to cut the rope connecting them in order to save himself. But “much to my amazement”, the fact we knew the outcome made no difference. Morris directs with the “impeccable timing of a thriller”, and pulls off a “masterful” feat of “stagecraft as well as mind-play”. Sound and lighting, performances and text all “bleed together” seamlessly said Kris Hallett on What’s On Stage – to create drama “as stomach-churning and terrifying as you are likely to see”.
Josh Williams as Simpson and Edward Hayter as Yates give terrific performances, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. And Ti Green’s brilliant set, featuring a giant rotating white zigzag, lends them added lustre, while tricks of perspective make the horizontal stage feel “dizzily vertical, creating such tension and jeopardy that theatregoers must remember to breathe”. Congratulations to Bristol Old Vic: the “obstacle of reaching the heights at the start of a new theatre era has been triumphantly surmounted”.