Bear Grylls: Endeavour, Genting Arena, Birmingham - review

A thirteen date arena tour around the UK entitled Bear Grylls: Endeavour.

As the audience piled into the Genting Arena for a Saturday night with the UK's most popular Chief Scout it's obvious the reach that Bear has, as children and adults alike came to see his great tales of adventure.

The show features Grylls taking the audience through five different adventures of real life survival in settings ranging from frozen Antarctica to the dizzying heights of Mount Everest.

These environments are created with the help of an astonishing stage set based on an innovative projection system with Bear donning the appropriate costumes such as a spacemen and a base jumper to bring each tale to life. Grylls is also joined by actors who help to elevate the stories and really make you feel like you're in among the action.

At times you do feel like you're transported to these environments, with engulfing sound and lighting that makes the arena a fully immersive experience.

He also takes the time for audience participation, including a heart-warming space exploration sequence that turns out to be with his son Huckleberry.

The sense of theatre within the show is what really elevates it beyond the lecture type experience that you would expect from these types of events, adding a sense of spectacle and wonder to proceedings.

Due to the heavily scripted nature of the evening however, there are not many points where Bears true personality seeps through into the delivery, and you can sometimes find yourself losing interest among the long sections of script.

This is an obvious problem for the target audience of the evening, being children, with many complaining of being bored in the interval.

It's perhaps when Bear tells stories from his own life, such as breaking his back in three different places during a parachuting accident, that the tales he's conveying become all the more relatable and interesting.

As a host, Grylls shoots and flies around the stage whilst delivering an engaging if not heavily scripted performance that is clearly pushing him outside of his comfort zone.

But that's what this show is all about. It's about inspiring and amazing both young and old fans alike, and as the packed arena leave back into the dark night of Birmingham there's no doubting that everyone will seek more adventure within their everyday lives.

by Dan Earl