The Swallowing Dark

Synopsis

Canaan and his son have come a long way to escape the horrors of Zimbabwe under Mugabe. But when Martha asks him to revisit his darkest memories, he s forced to fight for their lives a second time. Martha needs only an honest tale, but are either of them who they seem, and is the truth ever a simple story?

Our Review:

25 October 2011

Canaan is also known as the Promised Land, which some might find as heavy symbolically, as say, having two characters play chess. Similarly, expectations may not be high about a drama apparently concerned purely with the bare bones of whether the eponymous character and his son should be sent back to Zimbabwe. It’s in the hands of his case worker, but as she grills him about his past life to try and extract the truth, and then he includes traditional tales with testimony, her own experiences gradually come to light.

The play soon begins to exert a relentless grip, a claustrophobic thriller which is at home in the Studio confines. Admittedly, the run down set, office and home, is hard to picture as the latter, but that may be the point. Plus a white backdrop inevitably means one thing, though video does have a role to play which is more of an enhancement than usual. And a shift of light, a twitch of colourful shawl and some birdsong - there we are in Africa.

A passionate...

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