YOUR GUIDE TO EDINBURGH'S FESTIVALS
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
ED2015 3/5 Reviews ED2015 Theatre Reviews
Heart Of Darkness (Scandal And Gallows Theatre)
By Sarah Murphy | Published on Wednesday 19 August 2015
The outdated often offends (‘offend’ is such a feeble verb, isn’t it?) How might a modern playwright adapt a novel as problematic as Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, which tails the white coloniser up the Congo River, squeamishly recording the black presences along the way as “shadows” and “savages”? He might interrogate it but, sadly, George Johnston’s adaptation of Marlowe is dog-loyal, adopting a cute hyper-Englishness to excuse that cute, hyper-English racism. A white actor assuming the voice of a Congolese native – practical restrictions of one-man show aside – is parodic. Nevertheless, Guy Clark captained the stage tirelessly, his grieving widow pleasingly evoking 40s movie-star histrionics, and Johnston does deserve praise for brightening Conrad’s barnacley prose.
SpaceTriplex, until 29 Aug.
tw rating 3/5 | [Sarah Murphy]
