Heart of Grayness

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Simon Gray's The Rear Column, an anti-adventure of Stanley's years after the discovery of Livingstone, is pure revisionism. Gray goes into Africa with modern eyes; Stanley has marched off to a year-long diversion and his rear guard—five on-stage British officers and several thousand offstage natives—is left behind to degenerate at will. The play is the progress of falling apart.

It is a curious work, written in the language of the adventure movie with all the romantic myth removed…. The exceptional has been banished in favor of the ordinary; Gray, anxious to dwell upon that modern cliche, the banality of evil, robs his characters of the values of their own time.

The story of The Rear Column is one of men who fail not only in the judgment of history but also by the standards they set for themselves, and, as such, it should have provided material for a fascinating work. Jameson [the British gentleman-dilettante who is second in command] in particular shows how great the moral dilemma in the play should have been. He, alone of the quintet, is fascinated by the African continent…. There is no largeness of purpose possible in this play, and that, ultimately, is what belittles the script.

For as the characters' integrity diminishes, peripheral issues outdistance fundamental ones. The relationship between the younger men and Major Barttelot, the lunatic commander who constantly threatens to turn himself into Captain Queeg, becomes more compelling than their relationship to imperialism…. Their attachments to Barttelot are literally unnatural…. (pp. 121-22)

Something is badly wrong here. In a world in which private London societies would conspire with the entrepreneurial King Leopold to enslave a continent, the worst evil does not come from being gay. (p. 122)

Terry Curtis Fox, "Heart of Grayness," in The Village Voice (copyright © 1978; reprinted by permission), Vol. 23, No. 49, December 4, 1978, pp. 121-22.∗

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The Theatre: 'The Rear Column'

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