Tim McGeever (l) and Greg Keller (r) as Taylor and Harold in K2 at Berkshire Theatre Festival.
Why should you see K2, the play by Patrick Meyers that opened last night at the Berkshire Theatre Festival? “Because it’s there,” as climber George Mallory famously said about Everest. For the theatre-goer, there are some very good reasons. First you can get a sense of what such an attempt might be like, stranded on a claustrophobic ledge some 27,000 feet up the vertical face of the world’s second highest mountain. One out of four climbers never makes it back. Then, in the play, you are witness to the horrendous choices that our actions and their consequences demand.
Cramming a mountain that normally sits on the rooftop of the world into the intimate confines of the Unicorn Theatre is no easy task. The solution as devised by scenic designer Kenneth Grady Barker was part realistic, part suggestive. A sky blue cyclorama (wrap around) curtain with arching latitude and longitude lines that suggests slack ropes envelops a narrow ledge positioned on an icy rock face. Open to the elements, and offering scant relief from both the intense cold and brutal wind, the entire play takes place in a space that actually grows narrower as the evening progresses.
The effect of this is to thrust the actors closer to the audience, while drawing them into the intimate details of the two men who find themselves in one of the most intensely personal relationships possible: making life and death decisions for each other.
Climbing the 30' wall of K2 at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.
The script by Patrick Meyers has its ups and downs, if you will, and it is too focused on the unlikely friends who decided to climb this crazy mountain. We never learn much about how they came to undertake this dangerous endeavor; what, if any, training and previous experience they had climbing. As an observer, reporter or family member you would ask questions about the motivation and preparation behind the ultimate dance with death.
Taylor (Tim McGeever) is determined to find a way to get both his friend and himself to the bottom of the mountain by nightfall. Beyond this premise, Meyers serves up what is essentially a personality clash on stage. Harold (Greg Keller) has fallen, landing on this ledge with a broken leg. He is married, taciturn, and not easily ruffled. During the 90 minute course of the play we do not hear one word of complaint out of him. Taylor on the other hand typifies a blustery man. He lets fly with a stream of obscenities when frustrated. He hesitates, delays, and lectures his climbing partner on what he perceives as his faults while never seeing his own. He is someone who is expert at casting blame on everyone but himself. Because of this, I suspect the decision to set the action at the top of K2 was arbitrary, it could just as well have been in Carlsbad Cavern. the Mohave Desert, or the twin towers on 9/11. The play is about men, not mountains.
So the script has its problems which partially explains how little of it made it into the motion picture adaptation by the same name. Still there are some memorable lines, foremost being “The higher you climb, the deeper you go.” There are detours to neutron bombs, quarks, and albino foxes.
Except for a few climbing episodes to retrieve a rope, all the action is concentrated on the set’s shelf. The lighting by Shawn E. Boyle serves to focus the audience on it, drawing them very, very close to the actors. Director Wes Grantom found many ways to make K2 both gripping and exhilarating. He made the details count. He had the help of the Arcadian Shop in Lenox which provided authentic costumes, props and climbing gear. Indeed they sponsored the production. Training the actors in the basics of climbing gave them the ability to handle ropes while getting the audience emotionally invested in them.
Huddled against the elements, Harold and Taylor (Greg Keller and Tim McGeever) fight for their lives.
But for someone who notices small details, that experienced climbers would empty their backpacks and leave essential tools and supplies casually laying around in the “snow” is hard to swallow. It is careless and dangerous. A slight change of position could send them careening into the abyss. Such a lackadaisical attitude just guarantees trouble. And in the play an avalanche makes this real. Perhaps this was exactly the point that Grantom was trying to make, that these two climbers were poorly prepared for what they undertook. It certainly seemed so to me. Conversely, the determination of Taylor to get his friend Harold off the mountain made their descent truly heroic.
The culmination of the play hinges on a life and death decision that is decided not by logic, but by emotion. The two very imperfect men, each in their own flawed way, come to the correct, and ultimately fateful, selfless decision. (No plot spoilers here.) The play comes to a logical conclusion.
In the end, this is not a play about K2, but about being human. And it shows that even the most damaged among us can be a true friend, a real hero and someone to be remembered for a long, long time.
Berkshire Theatre Festival presents K2 by Patrick Myers, Directed by Wes Grantom. Scenic Designer – Kenneth Grady Barker, Costumer Designer – Laurie Churba Kohn, Lighting Designer – Shawn E. Boyle, Sound Designer – J Hagenbuckle, Production Stage Manager – Peter Durgin, First Production Assistant – Alison Whitley. Cast: Harold – Greg Keller, Taylor – Tim McGeever. In the Unicorn Theatre, Lenox, MA. June 17-July 3, 2010. About 90 minutes without intermission.
