‘Darkling’: play sheds light on the world’s worst industrial disaster and is UK theatre debut for Linnea Berthelsen 

Star emerged on Netflix global drama hit, ‘Stranger Things’…  and drama centres around the Indian city of Bhopal…
  
By Suman Bhuchar  
  
IN 2017 I WAS IN BHOPAL for a family wedding, so I thought I would visit the site of the factory which had been at the centre of largest industrial accident in the world.

I took a cab to the location of the Union Carbide factory and tried to get into the area. Obviously, I couldn’t, as the factory is now abandoned – but across the road, is The Statue of Mother and Child – which I learnt later was created by Ruth Waterman, a holocaust survivor as a memorial to those who were devastated by the gas leak.  
  
Bhopal became famous or infamous because of a gas leak overnight on December 2/3 1984 at its Union Carbide chemical plan – when due to lack of safety measures, toxic gas escaped into the atmosphere and injured over half a million people and caused approximately 3,000 deaths.  

 
The impact of breathing in this area continues to be felt today, through pollution of the environment, water contamination and other illnesses and the majority of people have not had redress or justice.
 
This was over 40 years ago and now a play has brought this story sharply back into focus. 
 

‘Darkling’ written by Titas Halder and directed by Matthew Zia tells the story of an unnamed woman growing up in the city by the lakes. She is only known as ‘She’ in the play. She is a poor and ‘unclean’ (her words).  
 
She goes through her childhood giving us biographical details, skips on the stage, talks about her sister and father and a mother lost in childbirth and her sister experiencing sexual assault from an uncle.  
 
It’s a difficult life and a hard watch.  

Halder doesn’t spare you and it is slow to get going – she is 17, when the gas leak occurs and we see her walking through the gas, covering her face – and from then on ‘Darkling’ is visceral and triggering. 
 
And the weight of this tale is borne on the slight frame of Linnea Berthelsen who makes her stage debut (people will know her as ‘Kali’ from ‘Stranger Things’.) 
 
It’s a solo show and Berthelsen is very good in being able to change her emotions appropriately – and which is then echoed by the lighting design of Rajiv Pattani.  

The stage setting is a raised rectangle platform patterned with bricks designed by Simon Kenny.  
 
It is surrounded all around by sand, which serves as a road or route for She to skip, walk and run around. 
 
There is a projection on screen of a big predator bird type image termed ‘The Giant’ which is the factory looming over the skyline.

‘Darkling’ is a slow build and the audience is led up to the looming disaster through signs, such as when  She  is pulling water from the well, it has oil in it. 

The writing style is poetic and has odd moments of happiness, and love – but it is fleeting.

‘Darkling’ serves as an essential reminder of the human cost of an environmental disaster and it is a good way of trying to understand what happened to so many people and why their story continues to matter.  
 
Berthelsen is very moving in her role and the play reflects the power of art and drama.  
 
ACV rating: *** (out of five) 

All pictures: ©AlexBrenner

Listings
 
‘Darkling’ by Titas Halder until October 24 at The Bush Theatre, 7 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd’s Bush, London W12 8L

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/darkling/ 
  
National Tour   
 
Birmingham Rep, October 30- 31; The North Walls Arts Centre, Oxford, November 3-4; Home, Manchester, November 11-14;  
 
https://www.atctheatre.com/production/darkling-2026/