O.C. THEATER : ‘K2’ More Than Survives the Climb

Few metaphors loom as large in a play as the precarious setting for Patrick Meyers’ “K2,” a one-act survival drama that is being revived at the Backstage Theatre with impressive results.

On a mountain-climbing expedition, two longtime friends from Berkeley, a criminal prosecutor named Taylor and a nuclear physicist named Harold, are marooned on a narrow ledge jutting from a vertical wall of ice at 27,000 feet, just below the world’s second-highest peak.

They really should be dead. But somehow, without a tent or even sleeping bags, they’ve survived a night on the ledge, whipped by savage winds in temperatures 50 degrees below zero. That they’re on the ledge at all is little short of miraculous--they landed there in an accidental fall that should have killed them during a descent from the summit of K2.

The production, which opened over the weekend under Al Valletta’s direction, captures both the chilling physical reality of their situation and its philosophical implications. The set--an icy cliff of sculpted overhangs and crags designed by Jeffrey Ault--together with risk-taking performances by Jerry Guerin (as Taylor) and Peter Taylor (as Harold) make an unusual theatrical experience, part Himalayan and part Zen.

“Mountains are metaphors, buddy, in case you forgot,” Harold reminds Taylor at one point. “The purest, simplest metaphors on this whole crazy planet. The higher you go the deeper you get. It’s that damn simple.”

Actually, it’s more complicated.

In the breaking light of dawn as they wake from sleep, astonished at still being alive, they take stock of their equipment, themselves and their slim purchase on life.

They have an adequate oxygen supply, some water and food. They also have some of their climbing gear. But they’ve lost a rope and between them have only one left, 120 feet in length.

The face of the ice wall is 600 feet if it’s an inch, Taylor figures, and they’ve got probably 300 feet to go to get to the base of the wall or another ledge. There’s no way the two of them can rappel that far down with a single rope.

The really bad news, though, is that Harold has a broken leg. He’s not just in pain, he can’t move. They’ve got to find a way off the wall within a few hours, before the short-lived sunlight fades and pitches them back into the deep-freeze darkness. To spend another night on that ledge would be certain death for both of them.

Harold realizes almost from the beginning that the only way for them to survive is for Taylor to attempt the steep descent alone. But Taylor refuses to contemplate the obvious. In desperation he climbs back up the ice wall, not once but twice--first to search for the lost rope, then to retrieve it--giving the audience a more or less realistic demonstration of mountain-climbing techniques in the bargain.

Meanwhile, to keep alert as well as relaxed, they tell each other stories about everything, from their social values (Taylor is a neoconservative with predictable views on do-gooders and free-lunch liberals) to their religious beliefs (Harold found God in Einstein’s unified field theory, lost God in “the existential world of quantum mechanics” and finally discovered the “plain brown wrapper” of blind faith).

They also discuss loneliness (Taylor is a womanizing bachelor) and family (Harold is deeply in love with his wife), criminal justice (Taylor regards his job as “putting lousy scum on ice”) and materialism (Western civilization is “the quintessence of gizmo consciousness,” according to Harold, and the neutron bomb the ultimate gizmo).

But while their conversation sometimes sounds too pat, as if the speeches and diatribes are the playwright’s instead of his characters’, a climactic fable that Harold tells about a blind little fox brings the play to a head with touching authenticity. It serves both as commentary and catharsis for the inevitable outcome.

That outcome ought not to be specifically described here. It is safe to say, however, that inevitable though it seems, the ending of “K2” has a certain irony, which arrives with a twist of logic. Survival in the most practical terms becomes, paradoxically, an act of mysticism.

‘K2’

Taylor: Jerry Guerin

Harold: Peter Taylor

A Backstage Theatre presentation of a play by Patrick Meyers. Directed by Al Valletta. Production design by Jeffrey Ault. To January (no date yet chosen for the final performance). Performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. at 1599 Superior Ave., Costa Mesa. Tickets: $12.50. Information: (714) 646-5887.