Performance Network successfully scales "K2"

The two actors play longtime friends Harold (Bowen), a happily married physicist and father who’s just broken his leg while falling onto the ledge; and Taylor (Manfredi), an unattached criminal prosecutor. Though the men are short on equipment and supplies, Taylor is determined to find a way to get both his friend and himself to the bottom of the mountain by nightfall.

So “K2” establishes its crystal-clear central conflict from the outset, and the stakes are indisputably high — which leaves Meyers with the task of getting the audience emotionally invested in the two men, as well as their friendship.

Does he achieve this? Yes and no. For Meyers’ script occasionally feels pretty heavy-handed, thanks to some extensive, self-consciously poetic speeches (usually written for Harold) about physics, albino foxes, etc. This dialogue wouldn’t sound natural in a normal situation, let alone one in which two men are facing a grim, life-and-death reality; and Meyers seemingly made Harold a physicist for no other reason than to wax philosophic about the universe and quarks.

Also, for men who are supposed to be longtime friends, they seem to be lacking in some pretty basic information about each other. (What drives them professionally, their perspectives on romantic love, how Harold met his wife, etc. would seem to have come up before in conversation.) In these moments, the playwright’s need to communicate something of the characters’ personal histories to the audience, in order for us to know them and thus care more deeply for them, clashes clumsily with the scenario at hand.

However, other moments — such as when the two men occasionally get loopy from a lack of oxygen, rage helplessly against their situation, spin a sexually vulgar tale in order to entertain and distract each other, and tease and snap at and confess to each other — feel wholly realistic and natural. Fortunately, there’s enough of this good stuff, and Bowen and Manfredi are such exceptional performers, that the show is powerfully affecting, despite the script’s few forays into pretentiousness.

Yet another crucial part of “K2,” of course, is the set. And while I’ll admit I wasn’t visually wowed at first by Daniel C. Walker’s ice-blue, cubist backdrop — featuring the ledge as a thrust stage, backed by a painted wall dotted with small footholds — I came to be more and more impressed with its design as the play progressed. Manfredi, as the able-bodied climber, scales the set a few times, and the heightened immediacy of a thrust stage definitely worked its magic, bringing the crowd into the heart of the action.

So I soon bought into the illusion; and helping me along the way was Andrew Hungerford’s positively outstanding sound and lighting design. The play begins with darkness and a chest-thrumming, ominous noise, followed by evocative, lightning-quick glimpses of the initial accident. In addition, the sound of the high winds, as well as an approaching avalanche, provided the audience with an exceedingly visceral experience.

Ultimately, however, the production’s success must be primarily credited to director Tim Rhoze and his terrific two-man cast, all of whom seem focused on the play’s subtle details: the actors speak in a huff-and-puff, strained cadence; they handle the climbing equipment with casual authority; they move around on the ledge (and Manfredi climbs the mountain) with convincing effort and caution; and they wince and brace themselves against the cold while scrambling for possible solutions to their predicament.

The end result is a haunting journey through one of the most terrible choices a human can be asked to make — a situation that, in context, makes the simple climber’s rope call, “on belay,” a devastating moment that threatens to irrevocably break you.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.