'Heart of Darkness'- Imitating The Dog

Imitating The Dog has worked for over 20 years fusing live performance with beautiful technical feats. In their most recent production, which they performed for the last time at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, the company re-tell Joseph Conrad’s classic novel, ‘Heart of Darkness’, and examine its relevance in 2019, stepping in and out of a cinematographic lens.

5 performers, 3 screens, 2 live cameras and an incredible tech team work effortlessly together to negotiate race, gender, nationalism, colonialism and themes of exploitation and violence, as the character Marlow (Keicha Greenidge) travels up the Congo river, and through a war torn Europe to retrieve Kurtz.

Lighting is cleverly used to turn a white backdrop into a green screen, and characters are transported to the inside of a plane, an office, a barren landscape, and a concentration camp on the screens above them. Camera angles and clever movie trickery are cut between to continue the narrative, as we see snippets of a beckoning hand, a gun, and the passing of notes, which are layered subtly onto the projections. The narrators also provided an intellectual but disconnected viewpoint, giving stage directions and camera shots without becoming too emotionally involved, as though the voice of Conrad himself, telling his experiences through the eyes of another character.

This was all beautifully and expertly done, and directors Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, and video and sound designer Simon Wainwright deserve endless praise for their achievements and unique ideas. However, I felt myself at times becoming so dazzled by the clever uses of technology that I did not focus on what the actors were physically trying to say, so I would recommend having a read up on the novel prior to watching this performance, so you are prepared for the meaty story.

The narrative is periodically interrupted with discussions from the actors themselves, who consider the themes of the story, and the role they must play in telling it. Accompanying them are projections of related images and texts, that channel a range of viewpoints. I particularly enjoyed this approach, as it allowed some breathing room from the wordy and intense story, which could occasionally get overwhelming, while also providing some thought provoking contexts.

This innovative and experimental production tackled a huge task, with the company even explaining themselves that ‘The story is impossible to tell, but it must be told’. It was highly successful in confronting contemporary debates, offering an interesting perspective from both actors and characters, supported by numerous sources of text, verbatim speech, and images. And while occasionally the content could become a little too much to take in all at once, it was highly informative and enjoyable.