Skip to main content

The Dark

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars

In the dead of night, a rickety bus speeds through a country at war with itself. The aim of the passengers on board is to get beyond the border and on a plane that will take them somewhere that’s supposed to be safer. What happens when they get there, however, is anybody’s guess.

Sound familiar? If so, bear in mind that poet Nick Makoha’s auto-biographical play, commissioned and produced by Ovalhouse and Fuel, charts events that happened more than forty years ago, when Idi Amin’s despotic regime in Uganda came crashing down, creating turmoil in its wake. With just two actors, an overhead projector and a design by Rajha Shakiry that contains all the messy clutter of lives and worlds in rocky motion, Roy Alexander Weise’s production makes flesh a noisy maelstrom of eternal passengers seeking sanctuary.

At the heart of what becomes a kind of dramatic suite of interlinked stopping-off points is a four-year-old Makoha and his mother, brought to life along with others observed at close range by Michael Balogun and Akiya Henry. As stories and characters dip in and out of view, the light and shade of the quote from Paradise Lost that emblazons the screen like slogans smeared onto a steamed-up window becomes increasingly lucid in terms of higher meaning.

For all the life-changing nature of Makoha’s journey over the play’s eighty-five-minute duration, it is its final moments that hit home the most. It is a scene which points to every latter-day sensationalist headline spelling out how it is for asylum-seeking refugees in terms of detention, leave to remain and having to justify a truth that will go on to define them forever after. In the current global fallout, in which borders, walls and lives on the run are in the thick of even more hyperbole, Makoha’s play is a poignant reminder of how being caught in a crossfire not of your making can leave its mark for life.

The Herald, February 13th 2019

ends



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...