They talk about the Strand School’s Latin motto “Procedere” roughly translating as to progress, go higher.  This becomes relevant when the master makes a decision for the boys to vote on whether they will take the easier route or the one across harder terrain.  With macho resolve they all vote for the hard route.   They face fog and snow which brings the opportunity to launch snowballs with the force of a cricket ball.  The boys don’t have the right clothing or footwear for this sudden change of weather with waist high snow. 

Lyons’s teeth are rattling, Eaton sings a song to raise their spirits.  They see a man in uniform and panic thinking he is a soldier, but he is a postman who advises them to go back down the way they have come.  The postman’s advice goes unheeded. 

Local villagers send out an alert and most of the boys are brought back and warmed up with blankets and beaten with brushes to get their circulation going. 

It is the Tour Guide narrator Eva Magyar who tells us what happens next and the aftermath of the memorials.  The spin on the news goes out just before the Berlin Olympics explaining how Hitler Youth rescued the English schoolboys.  Not true but photographs are taken of the survivors with Hitler Youth. 

Oscar Toeman directs with great skill.  By the end of the play we are mourning for the lost boys and sharing the grief of their parents.  Rachel Leah-Hosker’s movement of fitness exercises adds the period feel and Elliot Griggs’s lighting through the fog convinces.  I really liked this play with its outstanding performances from the three men playing boys and it reminds of the Orange Tree’s exceptional skill in their programming of exciting drama, old and new.