A long time ago Grizzly used to climb with his brother, Pete. But Pete died of a cerebral oedema on the mountain and his body is still there somewhere. Modern mountains are thick with litter and corpses. Now Grizzly climbs with Dog, a young man who found climbing (and meaning) late in life and who is in a tremendous hurry to get to the top. But when Naomi, who often accompanies the pair, has an accident and almost dies, the ageing Grizzly makes a pact - if she recovers, he will quit climbing.
The roar of the wind, the blinding dazzle of ice and the sense of steep places and thin air are hard to create on stage, but the Paines Plough team do it magnificently for Rona Munro's play about the view from the top, chasing demons and chasing ghosts. Long time dead captures all the absurd romance of climbing and the mad buggers who do it - those who work in dead-end jobs so they can spend the season risking their lives to notch up one more "hill".
There have been a number of plays about climbing in recent years, but Munro's is the most jagged yet. It is a knotty and often thrilling drama which not only succeeds in recreating some of the tingling physical sense of climbing, but which neatly avoids the easy metaphors about living life to the full. Munro's play understands the lure of mountains, the appalling determination required simply to put one foot in front of another when the air has thinned and your brain has turned to porridge, and the addictive intimacy of the relationship that climbers have with their companions. This is a play about a place in which you carry another's life in your hands and they carry yours; a play about living every day with death.
Miriam Buether's design, which serves both as mountain and intensive-care ward, is visually dazzling but sometimes prevents the drama flowing, and Roxana Silbert's production occasionally - particularly in the first scene - sacrifices clarity for atmosphere. But it is wonderfully acted by Garry Cooper as Grizzly, Jon Foster as Dog, Lesley Hart as Naomi and Jan Pearson as the Widow, a nurse addicted to her own pain. This co-production with the Drum reminds us that Plymouth is regularly playing host to some of the most exciting theatre in the UK.
· Until November 11. Box office: 01752 267222.
