DETECTIVES’ DARK ROAD
Rankin play makes local debut
One of the world’s great crime novelists, Ian Rankin has charted the mean streets, pubs and cop shops of Edinburgh in more than three dozen books, most famously the Insp. Rebus series, creating a fictional map of a brooding city that tourists never see.
His first stage play, co-written with artistic director Mark Thomson of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, reconstructs that Edinburgh-noir crimescape. Homicide detectives, their private lives misshapen by the burdens of the job, match wits with a possible serial killer.
A dark psychological drama with comic notes, some graphic violence and a surprisingly clunky theatrical structure, Dark Road is getting its Vancouver premiere in Ensemble Theatre’s summer repertory festival. Chris Lam’s production nails many of its key elements, but problems remain, including a shaky performance at its centre.
The protagonist here isn’t John Rebus but Isobel McArthur (Rebecca Walters), Scotland’s first female chief constable. About to retire after 30 years on the force, she feels the need to reopen an old case that proved important to her career.
Alfred Chalmers (Paul Herbert) was convicted of murdering and mutilating four young women on flimsy evidence provided by Isobel and fellow detectives Frank Bowman (Anthony Santiago) and Fergus McLintock (David Wallace). After 25 years in prison, Chalmers continues to insist that he’s innocent.
Fergus and Frank try to convince Isobel that revisiting the case is a terrible idea. She also clashes with her rebellious daughter Alexandra (Alysson Hall), a film student planning to make a documentary on Chalmers.
Is perceptive, acerbic Chalmers a Hannibal Lecter-style psychopath or was he set up as he claims? Herbert plays him on the knife edge, keeping us guessing whether he’s a truth-teller or murderous, master manipulator.
Santiago is also effective as Frank, the good cop who would do whatever it takes to jail someone he’s certain is a vicious killer. Rankin’s officers have been known to give the wheels of justice a little extra turn when they’re sure they have the right man.
But Rankin’s lack of theatrical experience shows in Frank’s multiple attempts to get Isobel to forget the Chalmers case, repeating the same idea without advancing the action.
Alexandra is almost as compelling a character as Chalmers, the stakes always high for her in Hall’s dynamic performance. Furiously competitive with her mother, Alexandra flaunts her sexuality and suffers an existential crisis as she learns unnerving things about their life.
Isobel herself is the real mystery in this production. Walters’ tentative performance rarely reveals the confidence, competence or authority Isobel would have needed to fight her way to becoming chief constable. And despite some late revelations, she never made me understand exactly why Isobel feels compelled to reopen the Chalmers case.
This Isobel also suffers curious lapses of protocol, leaving boxes of evidence strewn about her home where Alexandra can easily find them — something no responsible detective would do in a Rankin novel.
Whether this is a script issue or a production choice, it dilutes the gritty realism that makes Rankin’s work so compelling.