This one goes out to all the braggers who ‘did’ the Himalayas on their gap years. Oxford historian Amy Ng pits east against west in her first full-length play, questioning the way people buy and sell authenticity on their travels.
Bunny helps out in her family’s Himalayan hostel. After meeting Irish photographer Hope, who helps her break free of cultural taboos, she becomes a mountain guide for a small sustainable tourism company. But so much of what they offer, particularly to the rich clients who want cleanliness and comfort, is fakery - even the Shangri-La region of the Himalayan foothills is named after the mythical utopia in Frank Capra’s film 'Lost Horizon'.
Ng’s script is a real mixed bag. For all the Shangri-blah - info-stuffed dialogue that wears its research heavily, the awed tones in which Bunny and Hope talk about photography - there’s a thematic complexity too. Fraught Tibetan-Chinese relations, sustainable tourism, gender parity, the importance of art, the exploitative nature of art, the difficulty of making a living from art - it’s all there, laden as a Sherpa on a mountain.
Richness risks becoming mush, not helped by a couple of performances that have the false, awkward tones of a politician trying to talk to children. And Bunny’s role gets increasingly less interesting until all she really does is shout ‘It’s taboo!’ repeatedly. But Rosie Thomson as Sylvia Bass, an heiress looking for a sublime experience and pearl-clad even on top of a mountain, brings some much-needed depth to the acting side of things.
Yatkwan Wong’s stylishly simple design - white cloth hanging in a semi-circle - cleverly doesn’t attempt to recreate Himalayan vistas. But this bare theatricality, one of the production’s strengths, is erased towards the end. Gentle realism and depth of thoughtare sacrificed for the sake of a quick ending and it all gets a little bit Hollywood.
Ng’s play shows real promise: 'Shangri-La' knows what it’s talking about, but it doesn’t quite know how to say it without hitting us over the head with a trekking pole.