Last Friday night when I left the old Trojan movie house in downtown Longmont, home since 1991 to the Longmont Theatre Company, I hurried to my truck and cranked the heat. The temperature was actually fairly mild for mid-January, but a play about men freezing to death in the Antarctic has a way of sending shivers through the bones.

Based on actual events, Terra Nova tells the story of English explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who, in 1911-12, led a party of five men on a grueling trek across Antarctica in hopes of being the first to stand at the South Pole. The Englishmen would reach their mark only to discover a Norwegian team, led by Roald Amundsen, had preceded them there by several weeks. The sullen men took pictures, made camp, and left the next morning, pulling half a ton of supplies by sled, on an 800-mile journey back to their supply ship, the Terra Nova.

But they never made it out.

I hadn’t thought such grim adventure would make good fodder for the stage, and I was mistaken. Playwright Ted Tally infuses the factual account, culled from the journals and letters of Captain Scott himself, with an imagined series of theatrical flashbacks and daydreams that highlight the despair of the explorers. For though Scott’s mind wanders back to England, the men never actually leave the ice.

Tally won an Academy Award for his adapted screenplay, The Silence of the Lambs, so it’s no surprise how neatly he is able to stir up a palpable tension, even though the ending is so sadly certain.

Director Jennifer Gaydosh describes Tally’s script as a blending of “fantasy and memory with gritty realism.” She compliments the script by enforcing a steady pacing, which parallels the characters’ desperate race—first for the Pole, then for their lives.

Praise is due to the entire production staff, particularly Lighting Designer Brian Curtiss for his aurora australis, the crew who built that monstrous sled, Costumer Judy Ernst for such thorough authenticity, Sound Designer Chris “ChrisPy” Parr for the haunting and monotonous wind, and whoever printed the historic photographs alongside the cast headshots in the program—a nice touch.

There are times, particularly in the first act, when Terra Nova feels a bit like melodramatic dinner theater. However, as the play rages on and the men struggle to emerge from the windswept Antarctic wasteland, the audience warms to them. And the performances are mainly solid, despite a few butchered accents. Like the men they portray, the cast works together competently, if perhaps a bit ham-fistedly, led by a tireless Stuart O’Steen as Robert Falcon Scott.

I was worried that Kathleen, Scott’s loving wife at home, was going to be quite uninteresting. But by the second act, Jackie Tisinai gets to draw out the depth of the character a bit more, and she does it well.

It is Brock Williams, though, who absolutely steals the show as Amundsen—Scott’s opponent and psychological adversary. With his red hair and beard and his impish grin, Williams’s Amundsen is a spooky little devil. At varying times, Amundsen is Scott’s nemesis and consciousness. Ultimately, he is the specter of Death itself—smelling gangrene in the tent and whispering to Scott about the futility of his effort.

“You took Evans,” Scott shouts at the Amundsen mirage, as one of his men battles severe frostbite and fatigue, “but you won’t take Oates.” Death does take Oates of course. Death takes them all.

Terra Nova is a man’s play—an action/adventure story put up on stage. It is a tale of the foolhardy recklessness that is so unique to men. Kathleen Scott remarks on this strange psychology when she recollects her husband’s early advances: “I was virgin territory. Somewhere else for you to plant your flag.”

For several decades following the ill-fated expedition, Scott was lauded as a vanquished hero. Contemporary scrutiny has suggested he was more an incompetent blunderer than a tragic buccaneer. In Terra Nova, Scott is presented as something wholly human—conflicted and faulted and quite real. In a frank discussion with his wife, Scott recognizes his folly. “I feel like some ludicrous footnote to history,” he says. “And I had so hoped for greater things.”

Longmont Theatre Company presents Terra Nova , January 9 – 24, 2009. Call 303.772.5200 for tickets and information. And visit www.longmonttheatre.org .

Photos Courtesy of Tracy Cravens

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