‘Imitating The Dog’, a theatre company of 20 years', presents an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ that has been touring the country since November. It is supported by Arts Council England, Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University and Theatre By The Lake. Adapted and directed by Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, and performed by Keicha Greenidge, Matt Prendergast, Morgan Bailey, Morven Macbeth and Laura Atherton.
The adaptation chooses an interesting approach with a pointed repositioning of Africa as the ‘civilized world’ to Europe’s ‘dark continent’ of savages and violence. Unfortunately, the original interpretation and tour-de-force performances were lost in a muddled and unengaging mess. The play was a jumble of ideas all objectively and independently well executed but never quite formed a cohesive whole.
The play utilised live on-stage filming projected onto a large back-drop and three smaller screens positioned at the high front edge of the stage. The movement of the cameras across the stage were well choreographed, with the framing only slipping once or twice into something unwatchable. However, the overall effect proved distracting and seemed more a case of ‘jumping on the bandwagon’; the live projection has almost become a lazy shorthand for modern theatre with little regard as to whether it complements the story.or not
Another issue with this choice, was that the blocking of each scene was entirely to serve the filming, so there was nothing to be gained from watching the performances on stage and an audience has no choice but to watch the screens. This, I feel, robs the play of the full impact of emotional connection between its incredibly capable actors. The production may have benefitted from limiting themselves to the projection on the backdrop which showed landscapes and well-chosen scenes from ‘Apocalypse Now’; a classic adaptation of ‘Heart of Darkness’ itself.
Tying in with this ‘cinematic’ approach was the script-like narration that accompanied the action and filming; ‘cut to close-up’ etc. However, it was only in the subversion of this in the final scene that I felt the worth of this choice. The truly damaging choice was the back and forth between a scripted reality of the production process and the play. Essentially, a play within a play reflecting the thought process behind the interpretation with the actors playing versions of themselves. The content of this ‘scripted reality’ is certainly interesting, they dissect the problems with the text as it relates to race, they discuss the themes of colonialism and capitalism, and they debate how best to interpret the story through a modern lens. And all with cited sources. This makes the play an excellent choice for the put-upon student in need of a digestible literary analysis of a classic. But, in context, comes across as either an indictment of the company’s poor opinion of its audiences' intelligence or of its lack of self-confidence. Or perhaps it’s both. To use a film term myself, ‘hanging a hat’ on pretension does not a free pass make.
These scenes seem altogether too involved with the idea of their own cleverness while simultaneously terrified that it would be too much for an audience to understand on their own. Particularly as in the second half, the discussion became trite and the characters lost internal continuity in favour of lazy box ticking. If the company had trusted in its, quite frankly brilliant, idea and in its own ability to tell the story, we could have witnessed something really special. And the final scene really was something special; a masterclass in performance by Matt Prendergast and Keicha Greenidge. It was pure storytelling, unadulterated by gimmicks and a bittersweet taste of what might have been.
Reviewer - Deanna Turnbull
on - 16/4/19
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