Darkling – Bush Theatre, London

Writer: Titas Halder

Director: Matthew Xia

Linnea Berthelsen is a tour de force in Titas Halder’s 90-minute dramatic monologue Darkling about the Bhopal disaster of 1984. A catastrophic industrial accident at a huge American-built pesticide plant led to a leak of toxic gas that killed thousands of people. Thousands more survived but developed serious health conditions, including blindness, respiratory diseases and cancer.

Berthelsen is simply billed as ‘She’. We first see her as a very young girl contendedly playing in the mud under the blue skies of home, happy in the companionship of her father and older sister. The lighting and soundscape here and throughout give a sense of richness and variety to an otherwise empty stage. Credit is due to designer Simon Kenny, lighting designer Rajiv Pattani, sound designer Beth Duke and composer Niraj Chag.

As time passes, the girl learns about her mother’s death, gradually coming to understand the family’s lowly social status and poverty. When her father attempts to give the two daughters a better life, bringing them to relatives in the city, the younger girl never really adjusts to the noises and pollution of life away from her beloved home. And it is here that she finds she’s the object of ridicule from local lads who mock her for her dark skin.

Meanwhile, she witnesses her uncle forcing his unwelcome attentions on her sister. The little family eventually return to Bhopal, and it’s no surprise when the father arranges a marriage for her. An older man is chosen, and almost inevitably, the young woman finds herself trapped, desperately unhappy.

Around this time, our heroine makes an unexpected friend – a boy around her age who, like her, is drawing water from a well. This is the single period in the play where there is uncomplicated joy as the friendship develops.

It’s the boy who tells her, with naïve enthusiasm, about all the benefits this factory will bring to their lives in Bhopal. But as she narrates it in hindsight, the girl has realised it’s far from the truth. Her father tells her of a shocking accident there when an employee burns himself, rips off his gas mask, inhales and dies.

And it’s here that the difficulties with the drama really arise.  We are painfully aware that disaster lies ahead, and from this point on the play is unrelentingly bleak. The teenage lad is taken away by his family, only for the girl to discover she is pregnant. Berthelsen is superb, presenting with convincing physicality the horrors of the explosion and its aftermath. But it’s a very tough watch. She survives, but in one of the play’s many graphic scenes, loses her baby. Things just go from bad to worse.

Titas Halder’s language is interesting, the script laid out like poetry, with short lines and a degree of repetition which give it a sense of elevation. But it’s the overall tone that is difficult. Berthelsen’s performance is immaculate and the story of the Bhopal disaster an urgent one. Halder’s decision to refract it through the eyes of a single character is admirably bold. But there comes a time before the 90 minutes are up when it feels a bit like listening to the Ancient Mariner, and there is little director Matthew Xia can do to vary the intensity.

Runs until 24 October 2026