Long Time Dead

Traverse One is back to its old configuration of a steep descent from the back to the front. Which proves very appropriate for a play dealing so vividly with the love of and obsession with mountains. Big mountains, cold mountains, treacherous mountains; mountains on which a mistake can cost lives.

The set is a big, white oval space, with footholds and dangling ropes. A loud crack and suddenly Grizzly and Dog are attempting to rescue the badly injured and dangling Gnome. After a gripping period of Paines Plough's signature movement work we are in a hospital.

Gnome is in a coma, Grizzly is suffering from a drunken concussion and striking up a relationship with a widowed nurse. Relationships are what Rona Munro's terrific play is about. Relationships between a 'family' of climbers. Relationships with the dead. Physical relationships. Temporary relationships. Relationships of trust.

It's a play of two and a half hours that seems to fly by in half the time. Roxanna Silbert's direction keeps things flowing, even when characters are stuck up mountains. Rona Munro's script has a wonderful line in gallows humour, particularly when characters are stuck up mountains.

Performances are very strong. Garry Cooper's Grizzly is outstanding; obsessed by his dead brother and just the sort of man you'd want with you on a cliff face. His relationship with Jan Pearson's nurse, equally obsessed by her dead husband, is very well drawn. Jon Foster's Dog is a great chancer, as a climber always ready to go that one step further and not always when it's sensible. The voice of sanity in all this is Lesley Hart's Gnome, the girl climber who regards Grizzly as a father figure but who knows her limitations.

This is superb physical theatre, the climbing scenes are terrific, but it's also a gripping, absorbing and often very funny play, about people you really care for.