Review: DARKLING, Bush Theatre

It’s the mid-80s and India is changing. A young girl is growing up surrounded by nature under a blue sky until the landscape starts to transform. A factory rises right on her doorstep, and its fumes cloud the heavens. One night, everything changes. The American pesticide plant leaks 32 tons of toxic gases, leading to the worst industrial disaster to date.

The number of fatalities was never confirmed by the Indian government, and help never came. The ecocide still impacts the land and its people today. Matthew Xia directs Stranger Things alumna Linnea Berthelsen in TITAS HALDER’s harrowing invective against capitalism and ecological calamity.

Berthelsen is gloriously tragic. Alone on stage, she gives a remarkable, tireless 90-minute solo performance, going from childlike innocence to mature understanding, shifting her physicality and calibrating her energy levels accordingly. In turn effervescent or frantic, she fills the space with an open-hearted personality. Yet, there is a lingering bitterness in her portrayal.

While Halder is only overtly political towards the last third, she lets her social critique emerge from the soliloquy. The shackles of Indian society transpire from descriptions of gendered duties and routines: the men get drunk and play cards; the women make bread and cook. Berthelsen offers an intense, charged delivery, and it’s her panache that turns Halder’s poetry into a theatrical spectacle.

Xia builds a production that, in spite of fully relying on Halder’s impressively evocative and lyrical writing, becomes a visual, emotional show. The sound and lighting designs (Simon Kenny and Rajiv Pattani, respectively) are Berthelsen’s only companions, guiding her journey with situational sounds and highly suggestive light transitions.

Halder’s script conjures beautiful scenes. Imbued with specific visuals and a gorgeous use of literary devices, it’s layered and precise in its intent: by telling a personal account of poverty and failed ambition, we are introduced to a poignant conversation about the exploitation of the South Asian population and the selective disregard for the value of human life. The negligence and unresponsiveness in the face of tragedy echo in today’s response (or lack thereof) to current events around the world. 

If there’s one reproach to make to the project, it’s that it’s a bit garrulous. At one hour and a half straight through, the piece could lose about 15 to 20 minutes. It would be at the expense of our appreciation of the language, but it would slim down the reception of the plot’s magnitude. It’s a grave, lengthy, and ultimately rather difficult watch. It loses force in the final stretch, but it’s convincing and emotional, leaving a really powerful and lasting impact

Darkling runs at the Bush Theatre until 24 October.

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