Touching the Void - Tour / Duke of York’s

...and Inverness, where I'm planning to see it. Thanks for the positive comments, I'd decided to see it anyway but it's good to see your view on it.

Read that this has a 30 minute interval. Is that correct? I’m assuming that it’s for a set change.

2. Touching the Void - Royal Lyceum

Joe Simpson is dead, killed in a mountaineering incident in Peru. His wake is being held in Glencoe and his sister is there and wanting answers - why do they climb? is dying not that important to climbers? and how and why did Joe die?

Unfortunately for the wake attendees and Joe, he isnt dead but instead finds himself stuck on a ledge in sub zero temperatures with a broken leg, no food or water and several miles of inhospitable terrain between him and,maybe, safety

Entertaining stuff with an interestingly impressive set design.

A cast of 4 - Joe, Simon (the rope cutter), Richard (the man at basecamp) and Sarah (sister) are our only characters here and all of them give fine performances. Sarah is the showy character, she gets the anger and the intensity (with a bit of climbing).

The sound design is exception, you can never go wrong by including some Joy Division, and there are interesting lighting choices.

A fair chunk of the action takes place on the giant climbing frame that makes a dramatic, if slooooooooooooooow, entrance and its to the credit of the actors that they can still perform whilst also attaching and detaching themselves to the frame and moving across it in several different directions.

There is an odd directoral quirk - when Sarah asks a question at the wake and we flash back, for some odd reason he's made the actors all sort of lean back and adapt odd facial expressions. Bizarre.

Of course which makes it an interesting way to tell the story as whilst the sister is our way into the lifes of these people we are actually getting

The issue I have is that all of the characters are cyphers, there is no meat on their characterisation. Yes we want Joe to live but thats because the actor playing him is giving it all in tricky circumstances rather than we actually like the character.

If you want to see actors climbing a giant climbing frame then this is the show for you - even if you've only ever wanted to see an actor climb a table then this is the show for you.

And of course it ends just as the story actually gets really interesting. but I guess they want to end on a high - with a massive photo of the beautiful mountain dominating the stage as.

Never less than enthralling, with some perfect character performances. See it, because its there, 8/10

The interval last night was around 25 minutes and it still ran around 10 minutes over the advertised run time.

There on the 23rd Nov..

We're going on Saturday and really looking forward to it. Having read the script last year I really enjoyed it, although I have read the book a couple of times as well. Aside from a couple of additions it did seem a good, fairly straight, adaptation of the story.

£20 today tix rush tickets for this from next week

I'm bringing my kids to this next year. Hope booking it wasn't a massive misjudgment on my part! 😩 (although suspect it may well have been!)
And there was me giving out on here about the people bringing their kids to The Inheritance.

Peaked too early there Monkey...

Heavens above!

Really enjoyed this one today! Picked up a front row dayseat (BB9) at around 1pm. Great view, although looking up a lot as the stage is high. I think anyone under around 5ft 8 will struggle especially in act two as a lot of the action takes place at floor level. Next to no legroom but the cloth in front is atleast squishy!

I wasn’t familiar with the story and hadn’t read the book or watched the film. I found it fascinating and would highly recommend, especially if you don’t know the story.

I saw this play yesterday and thought it was very good. A quite gripping story (pardon the pun) enjoyed from seat K12 from a time out ticket deal. I need to watch the film now.