Children of Darkness proves to be a night of rich language and a display of dark motives.
Harking back to a darker, coarserage, one we endow with eloquence, wit and often brash cynicism, director Eric Richard stages this rarely produced play by American playwright Edwin Justus Mayer. He sets Children of Darkness pretty much any time post-1725 and illuminates its collection of characters so certain of their own ethos that they’ve little need to know each other. Unsurprisingly, the gist of the relations here is that no one can be trusted.
Set on the eve of the execution of the gang leader Jonathan Wild, the play’s slim plot follows a group of the wealthiest prisoners including counts, marquises and lords fuelled by greed, lust and their own sense of justified corruption. Added to the intriguing mix are Mr. Snap the gaoler, his wench of a daughter Laetitia, and the young romantic poet Cartwright.
Mayer’s script puts action and storyline on the back burner and instead focuses on elaborate language – this allows his characters to talk themselves up and over their defined character arcs. The audience is presented with an array of steely madmen obliviously worsening with cabin fever.
There’s the amusing Mr. Snap who ruthlessly uses his official position for unremorseful extortion and his naïve daughter who relishes her power over men. She's matched by Count La Ruse with his hidden back-story and hatred of women. The snuff-sneaking La Ruse is all too aware of his own priceless words, and it's he and Cartwright, the pacifist poet, who are Mayer’s most interesting pawns, his most successful attempts to sculpt layered characters.
They keep their audience wondering, but are often allowed to talk for too long with much of the brutality – and with it, the drama – left off stage. We only catch glimpses of the violent crimes within the prison, though this is sometimes done to great effect: hearing Wild’s body dumped after his hanging is distinctly unsettling.
Cary Crankson’s chilling portrayal of the crime lord Jonathan Wild gets too little time onstage. He has some of the best lines and Crankson delivers them with an assured spoken word quality. The brilliant but underused Joe Shefer, as the callous, deadpan Lord Wainwright, also appears for precious little time, but has his audience fixated.
Though the theatre in the round staging works well, a telling gesture is missed once or twice as expected. But Essential Theatre Company are fortunate to have found a home for their play in the Basement at Leicester Square Theatre: few London venues would allow the audience to feel like a fly on the wall of a prison cell. Children of Darkness turns out to be less a play about hanging or criminals and more about what drives people – our individual rationales and quiet maddening. Although, I’m not sure I see the timelessness that Richard is trying to hone in on, or feel much for the characters. But for theatergoers with a passion for language, this is well worth a visit.
Children of Darkness runs at Basement at Leicester Square Theatre until 29th May
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