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REVIEW: K2
Performance Network Theatre
From the New Monitor
K2 is tense high-flying drama
By Daniel Skora
Some 778 feet shorter than its taller brother Everest, K2 is the second highest mountain on the planet. But when it comes to difficulty in ascension, K2 is second to none. For every four climbers who have successfully reached its summit, one has died trying.
In K2, the current presentation of Ann Arbor's Performance Network Theatre, two American climbers, Harold, a nuclear physicist (James Bowen), and Taylor, a district attorney (John Manfredi), have taken up the challenge to climb the mountain. Soon after reaching the summit, they become engulfed in an avalanche that leaves them deposited on a narrow ledge overlooking a deep chasm. And so the play begins.
The situation of the two climbers is dire. Most of their supplies and equipment have been lost. Daylight hours are fading fast. To have to spend the night on the mountain means certain death. And Harold has a leg so badly damaged that he cannot walk.
Their only hope for a successful descent is to retrieve a length of rope that remains anchored to a ledge above them from their previous position.
It becomes clear to both the climbers and the audience that one or both of the men may not make it down the mountain. While they go about their preparations to try and retrieve the rope, their conversations drift, and the different personalities of the two men emerge, accounting for a good deal of the play's other focus.
Harold is a family man, given to talking about Albert Einstein and quantum mechanics and how, if you just look hard enough, God can be found in science. He expresses his dislike for gadgets and gizmos, which include just about everything, including all of the paraphernalia that the two have brought along in order to be able to climb the mountain.
Taylor is of a different breed, a brash, earthy guy who hates his job as a DA as much as he hates the lowlife he's responsible for putting behind bars. Unlike Harold, who thinks only about his wife and child, Taylor talks about his penchant for one-night stands and rough sex and punctuates his discourse with frequent use of the f-word (adult language warning goes here). Despite their differences, the two men share a deep bond of friendship.
By any standard, K2 is not your usual theater. It's a testament to the grit of the Performance Network that they've included the show in their current season. The show, as originally performed on Broadway, relied a great deal on special staging by a theater much larger than the Network's. In the Network's smaller venue, made even smaller with newly added onstage wing seating, the immensity of K2 and the scope of the climbers' situation are greatly reduced.
As live theater goes, it doesn't get more physically demanding than it does for Manfredi, who must twice make an ascent in full climbing gear to try and retrieve the rope. He also finds himself at times dangling freely in the air from the end of a rope. Throughout the show, there is so much rope tying and belt clipping and oxygen inhaling that at times the play seems to exist as a manual for mountain climbing. The outfits that the two actors have to wear under the lights throughout the performance make it necessary that the theater be kept cooler than usual. Those that chill easily should consider bringing along a sweater.
Playwright Patrick Meyers has crafted a script that wants to take full advantage of the adventure yarn that he's spinning, yet believes that two men who are in a fight for their lives are capable of discoursing on photons and neutron bombs and singles bars and a salacious lifestyle. Bowen and Manfredi are at their best when depicting the friendship part of Harold and Taylor's relationship. As mountain climbers, though, they are, by type and temperament, better suited for more sophisticated fair.
It seems fitting that the Performance Network, which has produced such great and varied theater over the years, should have the confidence to take on K2. That backdrop of blue ice that greets you when you first walk in to the theater is a set that you will not soon forget. In spite of the show's irregularities, the production stands as yet another example of the imaginary worlds that can be created by live theater.
K2 is directed by Tim Edward Rhoze. Set design is the handiwork of Daniel C. Walker.
SHOW DETAILS:
Performances continue through Feb. 7. For tickets and information, call the Performance Network box office at 734-663-0681 or go online to www.performancenetwork.org. The theater is located at 120 East Huron Street in downtown Ann Arbor.
Reprinted with permission of the New Monitor, Jan. 21, 2010
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