Nobody would expect a play about the legacy of the worst industrial disaster in human history to be all smiles and rainbows. Nor should it be. But the end of Titus Halder’s play about the Bhopal gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide factory that poisoned 50,000, killed 22,000 and left years of generational damage looks pretty darn bleak. Next to me, an audience member was audibly sobbing.
But Matthew Xia’s production takes a long time to reach this emotional peak. It starts with a girl (Linnea Berthelsen, who played Kali in Stranger Things), born ‘under a blue sky with lakes’. She lives happily with her father and older sister – all three of them always together – ‘in a dump’, but dreams of a brighter, richer future: one where she can ride her bike to her heart’s content and journey the country by car and train. Hope carries her forward. Besides, the Americans are building a giant factory, which will surely save them all.
At first, Berthelsen plays her role with a wide-eyed, squeaky innocence. She skips, barefoot, along the grimy perimeter of Simon Kenny’s set. At eight, she watches the boys around her go to school while she stays home to learn how to make roti. At 11, she earns money sweeping floors. And at 12, she hears the word ‘factory’ for the first time. Her sister remains her closest confidant; the idea of them being split up or growing apart fills her with fear. When she hears the news of her marriage, she begs it isn't true. Even as her relationship with her family becomes distant, hope of one day moving to the city, all shining and full of promise, keeps her going.
Berthelsen has a big job bringing the web of characters in Bhopal to life. But the distinction between them isn’t always clear. As her delivery gets faster, her words blur together, and it becomes difficult to make out what she is actually saying. With no set around her, we rely solely on her performance to build the scene – it isn’t always strong enough.
Halder’s writing is uneven, too. The night of the disaster doesn’t arrive until the back end of the play, with the early sections detailing family disagreements that feel unfinished. Xia’s direction lets the factory grow in the shadows, through Rajiv Pattani’s lighting design, from skeletal and looming to its final monstrous form. We see its damage first in oil splashes in the local well’s water, then in her father’s story about a maintenance man who dies from chemical exposure. It waits, primed for catastrophe.
When the leak finally comes, it plays out like a vision of hell. Breathing becomes impossible, and people stagger, collapse and bleed as the poison spreads through the streets. In the years after, though, the city is largely forgotten. ‘They must know what happened here, they must know,’ the girl, now an adult, says. Halder’s play may not be perfect in structure, but his attempt to put the lives of the people behind the headlines centre stage is potent.
