Suspended on wires high above Wembley arena, ruggedly hovering and somersaulting in a jumpsuit, Bear Grylls looks like Action Man auditioning to play Tinker Bell. His other outfits will include an astronaut suit and bright flashy swimming trunks in what is the strangest show I have ever seen. It mainly takes the form of an acrobatic lecture, in which the TV explorer tells stories of human survival in extreme situations.
But the performance is also part motivational seminar (“Don’t listen to the dream-stealers out there,” Grylls warns), intermittent Christian evangelical rally (“I see the hand of a Creator everywhere,” our host confides from above) and sometimes a big-budget Blue Peter feature, in which Mallory’s 1924 attempt on Mount Everest or the Apollo 13 emergency are turned into a perky CGI slideshow.
As the audience comes in, there is a soundtrack of howling wind and the stage is filled with a triptych of vast images of Grylls – one staring, two running, in black and white except for piercing blue eyes – forming what resembles an altarpiece worshipping manliness. The event is prominently billed as “presented by Land Rover”, but no cars appear in the show, which is essentially a vehicle for Grylls, although there are a couple of extras who, for example, put on parkas and drag a sledge to suggest an Antarctic expedition, during a sequence that puts the camp into base camp.
While various tests of the human spirit – in ice, sea, jungle or space – are dramatised on stage, Grylls, from his hoist in the gods, provides a running commentary, sometimes literally (“Surges of foul diarrhoea were pouring out of his body”), although the performers, perhaps thankfully, suggest this gastric calamity through mime.
The piece seems largely aimed at children. Grylls is currently serving as the Chief Scout, and in the audience for the final preview performance (to which press were invited), the few of us not wearing toggles felt naked. Parents of younger customers, however, might want to have hankies or distractions ready for the occasional big-screen projections of near-fatal snake-bites or maggot-infested flesh wounds.
Junior consumers (there is an 8+ advisory) may enjoy more the sections in which Grylls descends to Earth and asks volunteers to take part in demonstrations of making fire without matches or putting up a tent against the clock. At the premiere, the eager ranks of raised Scout-uniformed arms were ignored in favour of pre-selected candidates.
The content is generally too bonkers to be boring, but the conception suffers from a frequent gap between language and image. While this can be a blessing in the passages about explorers losing bowel control, it is more problematic during, for instance, a simulation of cliff-diving. Although his narration emphasises the high death-rate from the activity, we know that his attempt, from a low height with safety wires, wouldn’t have got past insurance or health and safety if it were as dangerous as he suggests.
Before the first performance, veteran entertainment promoter Harvey Goldsmith came on stage to declare that “no one has ever done a show like this before”, and, for perhaps the first time in his career, he can not be accused of hype.
-
Bear Grylls: Endeavour tours the UK and Ireland until 28 October.
