Showing @ Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 19 Oct @ 19:45
With a character so infamous you can even do Rebus tours, Ian Rankin’s opening foray into theatre is an exciting prospect. As Edinburgh’s first female Chief Constable, Isobel McArthur (Maureen Beattie) should be celebrating her 30 years on the force with gusto. But there’s a case she feels is still unresolved. Dismaying her law-enforcing peers and daughter, she begins to once again investigate the 25-year-old murders committed by Alfred Chalmers (Philip Whitchurch)
Unable to support his usual network of people and locations, the mystery of Rankin’s plot is slightly pared down, which while limiting the possible guilty culprits, doesn’t inhibit the chilling tension. The venomous injustice with which Whitchurch spits his protestations of innocence is as unnerving as it is rousing. And although Beattie’s McArthur flouts her commandeering resilience when needed, riddled with guilt and exhausted from emotional battlefields, her gradual exposure as a world-weary veteran pulls you into her narrative.
The unsettling atmosphere is continued through Mark Thomson’s choice of a rotating stage, smoothing transitions and creating TV like scenes through music and lighting that accentuate the distant ambience. This adds to the brooding air of Sara Lund surrounding McArthur, wrapped up in police-work rather than parenting, she has exceedingly more control in the station than at home.
The storyline is at times clunky (the wolf head scenario) with some of the later special effects looking like early panto. However there’s a strong theme of old versus new. Not only does McArthur open the play with mentions of retirement, but she’s paralleled with her eighteen-year-old student offspring Alexandra (Sara Vickers). A juxtaposition enhanced by Alexandra’s use of Twitter while Isobel listens to cassettes.
Robert Gwilym’s repeated motif of ‘I catch the bad guys’ is a romanticised view of cops, but is an appearance now clouded with bureaucracy and scandals. In a writing career spanning two decades, Rankin’s Dark Road teeters at that crossroads of modern era and golden age, warning us that for all the material world changes, human nature remains the same.
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