The Theatre: 'The Rear Column'
["The Rear Column"] is based on a historical episode. In the late eighteen-eighties, Henry M. Stanley, the explorer of the Congo, led an expedition to relieve one Emin Pasha … in the Sudan. Stanley's officers were British volunteers, and he left a column commanded by two of them—a Major Barttelot and a civilian named Jameson—behind at a camp in the Congo jungle, to wait for a promised contingent of porters. Three other officers, on their way to join Stanley … stopped off at the camp for supplies, as they had been instructed to do, but Barttelot was so furious at Stanley for abandoning him that he refused to give them any without specific written permission; unable to go forward, they were forced to remain at the camp. I set forth all this history and name all these characters, who actually lived, to demonstrate that, although it rarely occurs, a play—a powerful play, at that—can be written about real people who happen not to be Henry IV, Part II…. [The] play tells the story (as imagined by Mr. Gray) of that terrible year and of a misunderstanding so profound that it becomes lethal.
"The Rear Column" is essentially a play of character, ironic and tragic—of English gentlemen bearing up, or appearing to bear up, under unbearable circumstances, and of the demoralization of all of them as their reserves of physical and mental and nervous strength are eroded….
Each of these characters is written with admirable subtlety and clarity…. (p. 84)
Edith Oliver, "The Theatre: 'The Rear Column'," in The New Yorker (© 1978 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. LIV. No. 42, December 4, 1978, pp. 84-5.
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