A play about adventure, betrayal, and man’s impulse to conquer the world.
Dan and Will climb mountains. Aged eighteen, they climbed Everest. They became legends.
Rachel isn’t interested in being a character in Dan’s story. She intends to make her own. But with the thrill of a climb just days away, it’s not just principles, but people, in danger.
Elinor Cook’s play Pilgrims premiered at HighTide Festival 2016, in a co-production with HighTide, Theatr Clwyd and Vicky Graham Productions, directed by Tamara Harvey.
‘A gorgeous piece… layered and lyrical… Cook’s characters are beautifully drawn… Pilgrims isn’t just a protest about the way women get sidelined in stories – that men get to be heroes, and women, their prizes – it dares to suggest there’s a reason for that’
— WhatsOnStage
‘A honeycomb of delicately interlinked scenes that layer back and forth in time’
— Evening Standard
‘A theatrically exciting and free-flowing piece of narrative… an impressively detailed and suggestive example of contemporary new writing’
— The Arts Desk
‘A seriously smart new play… a restless piece of writing that keeps chipping away at itself, leaving sharp and glittering edges exposed’
— Time Out
‘Deft and witty… an eloquent cry of protest about the marginalisation of women in legend and story as well as life’
— Guardian
‘Thoughtful and quietly poetic. Investigating the gender imbalance in the narrative of history, [Pilgrims] constructs and then dismantles a classic love triangle’
— The Times
