On June 6 1924, after a breakfast of sardines and chocolate, climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine set off to make an attempt on the still unconquered summit of Everest. About one o'clock in the afternoon Noel Odell, another member of the expedition, looked up the mountain as the clouds parted and caught a glimpse of what he was certain was the pair about 800ft from the summit. Then, he reported, "the whole fascinating vision vanished, enveloped in cloud once more".
Mallory and Irvine never returned. They vanished into thin air - and into legend. Most potent was the idea that Mallory, known as the "Sir Galahad of the mountains", and his young companion did in fact reach the top and then perished on the way down. That would mean that they had conquered Everest almost 30 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Or is the legend just another story of British failure and futile loss of life dressed up as heroics?
The ceiling of the ESWA club at 54 Park Road, Birkenhead, is less than 10ft high. So it doesn't seem the most likely of places in which to recreate Mallory and Irvine's last, fatal climb. But that is exactly what writer Jim Morris, director Paul Goetzee and a cast of three professional actors and young ex-offenders are doing this week with the first performances of Morris's play Exposure - in the space that once served as the living room for Andrew Irvine and his family.
The Irvine home was once an imposing gothic pile, part of the same vanished world that saw Mallory and his party drag crates of champagne, 20,000 cigarettes and their dinner jackets half way round the world and up a mountain. But the house is now in a poor state of repair and for many years has been used as a social club. The former living room is now largely used for functions and with its disco lights, laminated wood walls and plum velvet banquettes isn't a natural candidate for transformation into the Himalayas. Morris and Goetzee don't let little things like that worry them. They talk of the enduring romance of the story, and the parallels between climbing mountains and making theatre.
The Arts Council's Year of the Artist scheme, which is funding the project, told them that their grant application had been successful because the whole thing "sounded a bit nutty". But then, trying to make theatre is as much about chasing dreams as attempting to get to the top of Everest is. As Morrison says: "The obsessiveness of Mallory appeals because you've got to be obsessed to write a play. The only difference between climbing and theatre is that nobody gets killed doing theatre." Morrison is certainly a bit of a dreamer: plans to incorporate a full-scale choir into the action have had to be abandoned for financial reasons, but he is convinced that the play could be turned into an opera.
The non-professionals involved in the project have a more down-to-earth approach. A weekend spent in Snowdonia has convinced them that there is something essentially selfish about climbing, but they admit that they were caught up in the excitement of getting to the top. Not that it was quite what they expected when they got there.
Angela Roberts, one of the local young people referred by the Wirral probation service, was struck by the over-crowding at the summit. "I thought the top of Snowdon would be peaceful and rural, but it was like Mobile City, with people ringing their friends to tell them that they were at the top. Most of these people had come up on the train." But climbing Snowdon has made her ponder both the heroics and the waste of life involved in Mallory and Irvine's effort, and the pleasure and pain of pushing yourself to the limits. Like the others, she prefers to believe that maybe Mallory and Irvine did make it to the top.
• Exposure is at the ESWA Club, Birkenhead (0151-666 5023), today.
