Well, one could hardly file the challenges faced by the central character in this story, identified only as She (Linnea Berthelsen) under ‘first world problems’. The Bhopal disaster of 1984 has its own Wikipedia page, which (at the time of writing, at least) claims it is largely “considered the world’s worst industrial disaster”. Over half a million people were exposed to toxic gas, resulting in at least 3,787 deaths and over 550,000 injuries. There were mass funerals and cremations.
The Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant was a major employer in Bhopal, India. Some of the people She came into contact with waxed lyrical about the employment opportunities provided by ‘the Americans’ (the chemical plant was 51 per cent owned by the Texas-headquartered Union Carbide Corporation): her father, however, was dead against the factory, and told She the story of a ‘safety man’ who died because – to cut a long story short – of deficiencies in health and safety policies and procedures.
But even without knowing any of that, the beginning of the story (the whole thing was – hurrah! – entirely in forward chronological order) was so upbeat and optimistic that it was almost inevitable the narrative would turn bleaker at some point. At least the show’s critical incident actually occurred, and wasn’t artificially crowbarred in for dramatic effect. Indeed, there was a lot going on in She’s life even before the disaster, which involved forty tonnes of pesticide being released into the atmosphere in a couple of hours, with the narrative introducing the audience to India’s caste system. Presented here, as She had darker skin, she was considered by some to be unsuitable for certain types of employment. Such discrimination is prohibited by the Constitution of India, although evidently, as this show would have it, there are ways of circumventing its exact wording. Or even the spirit of it.
Being such a personal story, few macro-level details are included in the narrative, which focuses for the most part instead on complex family dynamics and the interactions She has in daily life. The character’s worldly awareness and general streetwise-ness increases with age – and one of the reasons why this story is so intense is its longitudinal nature: there’s a lot of story to get through in ninety minutes.
The sound effects work well, though I wasn’t not so sure about the background incidental music, a negligible point in the grand scheme of things, as there wasn’t much of it. The story never becomes abstract but it was, for me, increasingly difficult to follow towards the end. The emotional intensity builds to a suitable crescendo, however. There was no explicit attempt to place blame on anyone for the disaster or any of the other events in She’s life, not all of which could reasonably be attributed to mass pesticide release.
There’s another play waiting to be written, if it hasn’t been done already, about the local community’s generation-long struggle in the disaster’s aftermath. This one, however, seeks to understand one person’s perspective and trajectory, and in doing so, there’s something personal and relatable about watching someone who just wants to live their life but encounters multiple obstacles along the way. A harrowing and intriguing account of a young woman’s struggles in the face of much adversity.
I walk home. The skyline is changed.
The skeleton is fast becoming a huge metal creature.
They have built a behemoth here.
Bhopal. India. 1984.
Born under a blue sky in a city of lakes, a girl grows up with her father and sister. The three of them together, always.
But as she grows, the land begins to change. A giant factory rises over her town. Her mother always wanted more for them – now the girl wants more too.
Then comes the night that tears everything apart.
Ferocious, brutal and damning, this epic story of a life ravaged by ecological disaster.
Linnea Berthelsen – She
Titas Halder – Writer
Matthew Xia – Director
Simon Kenny – Designer
Rajiv Pattani – Lighting Designer
Beth Duke – Sound Designer
Niraj Chag – Composer
Anjali Mehra – Movement Director
Shaheen Bagi – Casting Director
Zabarjad ‘Budgie’ Salam – Voice Coach
Sara Aniqah Malik – Associate Director
DARKLING
Bush Theatre
5 September to 24 October 2026
