Puppets are currently the height of theatrical fashion, but while others leap on the band wagon, Movingstage continues expertly manipulating the strings as it’s been doing since 1982. Every summer the company plays on an old Thames lighter in Little Venice before heading upstream to Cliveden and Marlow. Gren Middleton and Juliet Rogers don’t just rely on shows for children, they have also ambitiously staged Lorca and Howard Barker. This year, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Conrad’s birth, Middleton has created his own version of ‘Heart of Darkness’ – coincidentally, Chinua Achebe, who famously attacked the story for its reductive view of Africa, has just won the Man Booker International prize.
Middleton has roughly updated the story to include scam emails, President Mobutu, and diamonds rather than ivory. If the first part is a bit sluggish and lacking in focus, the piece comes into its own as Conrad (not Marlow) sets sail up the Congo and finally meets Kurtz, the legendary trader, who is said to be indulging in ‘illicit dances and unspeakable rites’. The dying puppet looks skeletal enough to join the pile of skulls that sway on a hammock behind him. And his final cry of ‘The horror! The horror!’ is still scary even if apparently spoken by a wooden midget (the voice is Ben Onukwe’s).
There’s no shortage of atmosphere created by Elizabeth Barron’s richly-coloured backdrops, traditional African music, and the masked dancers who stamp across the stage. It helps that you can hear the water lapping outside the theatre. Achebe might not approve, but Conrad surely would. He once lauded marionettes for coming ‘so near to being immortal’.
