Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, touring May 2004

Claire Yuille as Jackie, Candida Benson as Helen © Douglas Robertson

IN A perfect example of niche marketing, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre is making its annual tour of the Highlands and Islands with a play about climbing Munros. Short of performing Alan Wilkins’s drama in an actual bothy on Sgurr Mor, the company could have got no closer to its target audience.

And that audience, I imagine, will be duly satisfied with what it finds. Wilkins’s play is theatrically modest – it could be adapted for the radio with only the slightest of tweaks – but it is thoughtful and solidly constructed, and it evokes the world of the hill walker with careful accuracy and insight. Anyone who has enjoyed the solitary emptiness of the great outdoors will recognise the existential questions that Wilkins’s five characters ask themselves one storm-ravaged night miles from civilisation.

His central story concerns a married couple who have spent five years bagging Scotland’s Munros. They have one more to climb before their mission is complete. Or so Colin (an earnest Matthew Pidgeon) thinks. His wife Helen (a brilliantly troubled Candida Benson) has a cruel psychological secret in store for him as punishment for the infidelity that nearly broke their marriage five years earlier. As far as she sees it, they’ve been climbing in parallel rather than together, pursuing a five-year hobby that has merely been a distraction from the death of their relationship.

Their argument progresses in fits and starts as they are interrupted by three other climbers sheltering from the storm. One is an old man (Finlay Welsh) on a curious mission to rebury a woman who died 50 years ago. The second is a rugged walker (Lewis Howden) who insists on lugging around a heavy rock in his rucksack. The third is a young city-dwelling photographer (Clare Yuille) who’s got lost on the mountain and isn’t at all happy about it.

What they have in common is an awareness that the wilderness has allowed them to reflect, to be more true to their instincts, however eccentric or inexplicable they may be. For all of them, the encounter in the bothy is a turning point, a moment of resolution or a moment of change seemingly prompted by the landscape itself.

The play isn’t quite as cathartic for the audience, but it’s subtle, intriguing and solidly-built and shows Wilkins as a promising first-time writer.

The Nest can be seen at the following venues:
Aros Hall, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Thursday 6 May 2004
Easdale Island Hall, Easdale, Saturday 8 May
Macphail Centre, Ullapool, Tuesday 11 May
Coigach Community Hall, Achiltibuie, Wednesday 12 May
Rosehall Community Arts, Rosehall, Thursday 13 May
Ardross Hall, Ardross, Friday 14 May
Village Hall, Ballachulish, Monday 17 May
Corran Halls, Oban, Tuesday 18 May
Aros Centre, Portree, Isle of Skye, Friday 21 May
Dornie Village Hall, Lochalsh, Saturday 22 May

© Mark Fisher, 2004