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Theatre Review How the West was won

JAN WOOLF is blown away by a black South African take on US colonisation

Dark Noon 
Pleasance, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

THIS terrific ensemble piece by South Africa’s Fix+Foxy Productions, needs to be seen. It’s breathtaking, carrying the story of the 19th century US Midwest with high-energy acting, narrative and a terrible beauty.  

It’s a take on High Noon and the setting of many Westerns; the movie genre that pits good against evil and peddles harsh justice, corny tales of retribution, the loner hero — all that. We cannot help but think of US foreign policy. 

But that vast land was actually an anarchic, vicious mess of individuals killing each other and those already there.

As one of the actors announces, “After the American civil war, thousands of violent, mentally ill men took off to the Midwest to join the race for land, gold, wealth and whatever they thought of as the American Dream.” 

We open with a large bare square rust dirt stage, around which the audience sit like spectators at a rodeo.

The starting point: hungry, destitute white Europeans fleeing west across the ocean for a second chance at life. Sound familiar?

There were 35 millions of them. Conditions were terrible, disease was rife and anyone with TB was sent back. Thereafter people and families fended for themselves if there were no relatives waiting for them. 

The theatricality of this is wondrous, as black actors smear white paint, throw talcum powder into their faces and don wigs in a reverse parody of blackface. 

The imagery, some on screen, some on stage, is akin to that of Weimar Republic cabaret. 

As the ensemble assemble a set for a classic US Western, various scenarios are played out: Ellis Island, a gold mine, a first nation people reservation, prison, bar, the railroad (worked by Chinese) and a shop.

We see cannibalism, genocide and male rape. The few women sent out were mostly prostitutes, their children forming the next generation, and the holy roller church brought in to impose a harsh moral code. 

This is all unified in highly imaginative burlesque as the set for a Tom Ford or Sergio Leone-style Western comes together. Little House on the Prairie it ain’t, and special praise to set designer Johan Koljaer.  

Actors keep their South African accents. This is powerful, giving an incredulous outsider perspective, intensified by our knowledge of South Africa’s own history.

They totally shaft the romanticised and glamourised element of the American story, the part that seems lodged somewhere in many a US politician’s psyche. 

At the end each actor shares a memory of watching Westerns on TV in South Africa. One was bored, another incredulous, another saw right through them.

The only white member of the cast expressed shame that his grandparents had chosen to settle in apartheid South Africa.  

Co-directed by Denmark’s Tue Biering and South Africa’s Nhlanhla Mahlangu, this is 140 minutes of mind-blowing theatre. 

Runs until August 27; box office: (0131) 556-6550, pleasance.co.uk.

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