The Glass Mountain

In a coach ploughing its way across a darkened continent, a young baker fantasises about his future in a new country. A girl scrambles up a ladder to the top of a glass mountain, perched precariously between one life and another. The Glass Mountain, a work-in-development from Trestle Theatre, mixes the outline and images of a traditional fairy tale with the stories of modern-day Polish migrants. Combining half-abstracted physical storytelling, Eastern European story-singing, and robustly accessible character comedy, the piece explores the uncharted territory between the heroic quests of myth, and infinitely less simple real-world travels.

The four performers shift sensitively and with unobtrusive skill between the different levels and strands of the unfolding narrative. Slipping between speech, song, mime, dance and clowning, they move with supple effortful purpose, deep concentration, and an appealingly earthy sense of humour.

Three would-be heroes explode from the baker’s sleeping mind, brilliantly making a mountain of their own misdirected exertions. An off-balance mid-Channel flirtation provides a deliciously absurd comic interlude in the protagonist’s optimistic wanderings. A fabulous eagle carries a young man caught in its talons, beating giant wings with thrillingly possible weight and friction. And in the long, dark silence of an overnight drive, dreams are reassessed, and plans altered.

The show’s polyglot vocal score gives all comers the opportunity to stand in the bemused shoes of the outsider, while its plaintive, pungent and haunting harmonies weave dreams and real-life losses into a single thread of yearning. As yet unfinished, but already roughly enchanting, The Glass Mountain has the potential to become something rather special. The finished version will tour in autumn 2009, and looks set to be a hopeful, heartfelt and most rewarding journey.