Epic survival story Touching The Void is coming to the West End — directed by one of the men who made War Horse a hit.
The play is based on climber Joe Simpson’s account of his near death experience on a South American mountain that also became a hit film.
Director Tom Morris will transform the stage of the Duke of York’s Theatre in St Martin’s Lane into the cliff face where Simpson struggled to survive after his climbing partner cut the rope connecting them sending him hurtling into an icy crevasse.
Simpson eventually crawled to safety through a blizzard with a broken leg and later wrote the book of the same name that inspired the film and the play.
He admitted he thought the idea of a stage show of his ordeal was “impossible” when he was first approached about it.
He said: “I ignored it then they got back to me and I thought I’ll just let them do it and it will be a disaster and then I found out Tom Morris was involved which impressed me because I had been to see War Horse and if he can do that with a model horse I thought he could probably do anything.”
Simpson, who saw an early run of the play in Bristol, said it was a “remarkable” show but admitted it was “very unsettling” for him to watch.
He said: “I’m probably the worst person to judge anything because I can’t see through all these mirrors whereas everyone else can suspend their disbelief because they don’t actually know the truth.
“I joked to them ‘Oh yeah next year it will be on Broadway’, but now I’m beginning to wonder.”
The play opens on November 9 and will run to February 29.
