Your Last Breath

Hotly-tipped young upstarts Curious Directive are the nascent team behind this impressive theatrical fusion of science and storytelling.

Their devised work comprises a quartet of storylines, spread across the centuries, all inextricably bound to the wild, snow-smothered Norwegian mountains and the incredible true story of extreme skier Anna Bågenholm who survived extreme hypothermia after being trapped under ice in 1999. Her body temperature fell to 13.7°C—the lowest temperature ever recorded in a surviving human—and her heart stopped for three hours.

The other three stories interweave and unfold episodically. In 1876, Christopher, a family man and cartographer, tries to map an unchartered area of northern Norway; in 2011, a city-dwelling distant relative, Freija, returns to the area to scatter her father’s ashes and makes a life-changing discovery; and in 2034, a man, likely Freija’s son, explains how Anna’s miracle helped saved his life.

It takes a while to catch hold of each narrative thread as they’re spun, often at speed in a blur of stage-shifts, video projections, mime and object manipulation. But having gained a foot-hold, there’s some moving moments of quiet beauty here, played out on an evocative white stage upon which the five actors invoke the fizz of London and the brutal Scandinavian winter with nimble skill.

At the end, each story meshes into a wonderfully composed finale as Christopher, alone and stranded in the dark with the bitter cold closing in, sombrely concludes with a final gaze at the mountain, "the map is finally closing in on me”. As for Curious Directive, they’re only just approaching the summit.