Inexpressible Island

David E. Kemp, former drama professor at Queen’s University, is the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Among David Young’s plays are Fire, written with Paul Ledoux and the
recipient of a Chalmers Award; Love Is Strange, based on the true story
of a Saskatchewan man who stalked singer Anne Murray; and Glenn, a study
of pianist Glenn Gould.

Inexpressible Island illuminates the lives of the six members of a
scientific party attached to Captain Robert F. Scott’s ill-fated 1912
expedition. The six men, who were surveying part of the polar ice cap
while Scott was attempting to reach the South Pole, survived for eight
months in an environment so hostile that it almost defies description.
They all returned safely to England, yet their achievement—all but
forgotten today—was completely overshadowed by the eventual discovery
of the bodies of Scott and his party.

How each of the men in the party deals with isolation (a recurring
theme in Young’s work) is one of the play’s major fascinations. The
setting—at the height of the British Empire’s power—necessitates a
rigid class system that generates many of the play’s tensions. But
ultimately, this remarkable work transcends time and place as it
explores the universal human need to maintain order in the face of
chaos.