Long Time Dead

"Touching the Void" meets "Jules et Jim" in this tense play about an ill-assorted trio (two men and one woman) and their near-fatal obsession with mountaineering.

First, we see the mountain, looming up into sky, plunging down into abyss, hanging over us.

We hear a roar, a terrible roar of a storm that dies down to nothing but the panting of three climbers, hanging in space.

Their head torches swinging wildly - the only light - apart from the all pervasive glow of the sky reflecting off ice.

An ice cliff, halfway down a mountain: Gnome is dangling, helpless, off a rope.

She's injured. She's bleeding. Grizzly and Dog are in the process of rescuing her. Rona Munro's play begins vividly and continues, suffused with black humour, to explore ghosts frozen in time, the immediate bonds of camaraderie and horizons yet to be discovered. "Long Time Dead" is premiered in October 2006 by the prestigious new-writing theatre company, Paines Plough, at the Theatre Royal Plymouth.