Scaling the Heights, Seeking the Sacred

Playhouse's 'Willi' explores risk and reward

REVIEW BY RICK PENDER

Willi Unsoeld was an explorer of the highest order. In 1963, he was one of the first Americans ever to scale Mount Everest, and he took a more treacherous route than the man who beat him by three weeks. He was also the first ever to camp at an altitude of 28,000 feet. That's up there.

Unsoeld, as portrayed onstage at Playhouse in the Park in its current production of John Pielmeier's Willi, is also out there. The play is staged as a 90-minute (one-act, one actor) slide-lecture. It's a lively blend of storytelling and audience involvement. As Unsoeld, Jack Wetherall deftly engages the audience from the outset, swinging in on a rope line and asking the audience when they were last in touch with anything sacred.

It's not the kind of question you expect from a mountain climber. But Unsoeld was an unusual man, not motivated by the challenge to be first. His explorations and ascents had much more to do with measuring his own heights. After some initial, good-humored retelling of his early exploits at amateur climbing on Long's Peak in Colorado -- he recruits two members of the audience to help him recreate the scene atop boxes, planks, small tables and several stepladders -- we get deeper into his philosophy about risk-taking to find joy.

That's the essence of Willi Unsoeld. He didn't climb a mountain merely "because it was there." His task was to know himself better, to test himself. Unsoeld was instrumental in establishing the Outward Bound program, premised on the notion of pushing beyond one's personal comfort zone to gain a deeper grasp of the soul. He was once asked by a fearful mother if he could guarantee her son's safety; no, he told her. But by sheltering her son from risk, he added, she would guarantee the death of his soul. Like him or not, there was no doubt Willi Unsoeld was alive.

Behind the risk and the fear, Unsoeld finds a kind of joy, a unity he cannot quite articulate, perhaps a "peace that passeth understanding." For him, the physical climbing helped him to scale the spiritual aspiration toward the sacred.

Although it's hard not to like this ebullient, spirited man, his inability to explore his own motivations makes Willi less than satisfying. The man is full of contradictions: He's a rugged individualist, yet he explains that achieving a summit is less important (to him, at least) than the camaraderie of the ascent. But he concludes with a sad tale of his daughter dying on a later climb in the Himalayas, a story in which he seemed helpless to anticipate the danger or to have protected her.

Wetherall completely captures the soul of this unusual man. His sense of humor -- captured in some banter and small talk with the audience and his re-creation of climbing using everyday articles (boxes, ties from a costume shop strung together as a belaying line) -- is nicely present, as is his more human side. When a stage-hand carries off a table, he quite naturally pats her on the shoulder to say thanks. It seems completely in character.

Wetherall is animated physically, constantly in motion. He equally captures the man's crudeness (he has his frostbitten toes pickled in a bottle) and his passionate sensitivity to nature and to the wonder of creation. Credit is surely also due to director Charles Tower, who has helped Wetherall keep the monologue constantly enlivened and engaging.

Rob Odorisio has designed a bare-bones, hardwood-planked lecture hall for the intimate Shelterhouse Theatre, and the slide projections of the Everest climb work well on a two-paneled screen for everyone to see. Dan Kotlowitz's lighting design warms up and chills down the atmosphere as needed, making us feel the cold, hear the wind howl and finally see the glow emanating from Unsoeld's joy.

Willi Unsoeld tells us that he's trying to make sense of his desire to climb. But his real exploration was of his own soul. While he doesn't examine his motives or enable us to see them in a telling way, we are certainly moved by the power of his experience.

PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK presents Willi through May 24 at the Shelterhouse Theatre.

CityBeat, Vol. 4, Issue 24; May 7-13, 1998