Review by Simon Jenner, May 21 2026
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
A South African history of the American nineteenth century? It sounds like a fit. fix+foxy are a South African company with over 20 years’ experience. Their theatre might be described (though these terms would not be adequate) as immersive, epic and Brechtian. But that would be a start.
After acclaimed tours and several awards, they bring Dark Noon to the Brighton Festival at the Corn Exchange Brighton till May 24. fix+foxy are led by Danish director and scriptwriter Tue Biering with choreographer and co-director Nhlanhla Mahlangu.
Photo credit: Tue Biering
Biering makes no apologies for this being a South African perspective either. English might be the dominant language, before an English-speaking audience: but it’s not the only one spoken. Speaking a language of oppressor/oppressed (I think Afrikaans and other Bantu languages), storytelling is not only fluid, but on occasion translated for our benefit. What is attempted is a slice of American frontier history between around 1810 and 1890 when the frontier was officially closed. That is also the date of the Battle of Wounded Knee, the last battle or violent extermination of First Americans although that particular detail is not referenced here.
Dark Noon is playful, gestural (someone shot keeps getting up and is shot again) and with a touch of vaudeville and absurdism. But it’s more, notably a relentless tale of dispossession, not only of indigenous peoples, but the displaced and settlers themselves falling behind, already often starving (graphically displayed, including cannibalism), and being replaced, even murdered by the more successful. The whole hammers out a creation myth that explains the unredeemed violence of America rather than its civilising pretentions.
Matters start with a bare cork-coloured floor. Gradually Johan Kølkjær’s set builds up, and Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz impresses with the sheer number of often comic but ultimately useful props: the most striking is a Coca-Cola van that almost sets off a civil war. A train track is suddenly laid down the centre from an aperture upstage. A working train blasts through, with some of Christoffer Gulløv’s most effective lighting. Then various skeletal buildings are thrown up. The whole set becomes busier, echoing the way the plains give place over about 80 years to a bustling, chaotic and increasingly violent townscape set. Dry ice and a frantic narrative intensifies. The end is cacophonous, stifling, and sinister.
There is extensive use of Rasmus Kreiner’s videography and projection, with just two units. One is a booth upstage where various narrators in different headgear or none declaim against a backdrop, all projected on a screen above – headgear is probably the defining feature of Camilla Lind’s striking costume designs. There is also a large screen from a vox-pop roving camera where a cast member sits next to an audience member and the whole is projected. The audience member is asked a question and might seem bemused by the attention. It is managed respectfully and no-one is dragooned. One poignant moment on this projection sees the “Settlers” play the “Natives” like an American baseball game with that same actor sitting in the audience now commentating. The “Natives” are winning 6-0. But the “Settlers” have a backup. Guns.
In its widest terms, Dark Noon moves from starving Europeans emigrating and dying on board ships to slavery (audience members marked and sold), dispossession, and murder of First Nation Americans. Then phases of frontier barbarism, as it’s termed by the East Coast, in their turn termed “city slickers”. The Gold Rush follows with an extraordinary rendition of Peggy Lee’s “Fever”. The next ‘chapter’ sees the erecting of a church, complete with extortionate pastor. It’s followed by township mayhem, lonely cowboy life, and in the absence of women, widespread homosexual practice, not seen as such. Then when women are finally introduced in small numbers, they could only be prostitutes. There is murder aggravated by bars and liquor as the only medicine against illness and pain. The arrival of the sheriff brings little respite, merely a ritualizing of violence. Finally the set piece arrives; the revolt of the dispossessed, massacring whole towns.
Seven South African actors multi-role and morph throughout the 100 minutes of this experience. They are phenomenally good individually and collectively, and it would be impossible to single anybody out: Mandla Gaduka, Kaygee Letsholonyana, Lillian Malulyck, Bongani Bennedict Masango, Siyambonga Alfred Mdubeki, Joe Young, Thulani Zwane. But they are not alone. At various intervals, audience members are recruited in twos and threes, and finally in battalions.
Photo credit: Tue Biering
The cast apply talcum powder and blonde wigs, not only inverting the oppressor/oppressed trope with “white face”, but signalling to contemporary politics and by using the term accurately, refer to “genocide” in the last of the eight chapters. There is obvious contemporary resonance.
None of this, despite being couched in the nineteenth century, seems in the least anachronistic. And naturally (and how unnaturally) the settlers brought their colonialism with them. Mainly from Britain but elsewhere in Europe too. America is ourselves as Europeans, with a wild (west) permission. Nor does America, with this lineage, seem quite to have moved on. “Imperialism and capitalism” are two systems twisted in one DNA spiral, it’s claimed, from the original frontier: closed in 1890. But seemingly wide open.
It reaches forward, to today’s violent headlines: the blond Trumpian wig is killer-clown funny, but here assumed by several actors, refusing to guy any one political leader when a whole culture built what we see. And it references back: to Britain, the Netherlands and other imperial powers’ scramble for Africa (Britain and the Netherlands fought over, among other things, New Amsterdam aka New York). Actors from one oppressed nation pay tribute to others who suffered the same colonizers and slavers. The lash goes on.
After the experience, each cast member files up to speak about what the Wild West in their first cinematic encounter meant to them, often in early life. Each experiences the sanitizing films differently, but their ultimate verdict is one of an industry distorting and suppressing. Their own origins, and their approach to this storytelling are brought in. It’s like a collective debrief of their stage performance. It’s a sobering, ingenious act of openness but carries its own ironies. Though it might seem invidious to single out Joe Young, his experience – being part of a British family migrating towards Apartheid during the 1980s when the world knew its evils – is chilling. Young relates how it could easily have been him doing the killing, had he been recruited into the armed forces.
Some found that sheer battering processional of chapters unrelenting, and pace did not vary. Admittedly language was an issue: some did not find the words distinct. True, beyond the obvious moments of translation, there are moments which could do with some peak clarity, though Ditlev Brinth’s sound provides an authentic clangour and intimates the chaos with violence of this phase of American history. In itself it is a critique of the founding myth as noise; with the other elements providing the spectacle; how we can read several genocides by lightning. Overall though, the eight chapters of this extraordinary production, with its personal epilogue, is as unclassifiable as it is overwhelming.
There have been ironic takes on American foundation myths before, by the American TEAM theatre at the National’s Shed in 2013. But it seems lightweight compared to the loud ringing nature of truly epic theatre that does not stint in its laughter, terror, and an unforgetting of what has been suppressed. It’s the most important piece of theatre to have arrived in Brighton for several years. It must be seen.
Note: Image may relate to a previous production with different cast members. “Paddington” sign has been moved to fit a template. Photo credit: Tue Biering
Previously published in Plays International and Europe, whose kind permission to reproduce it here is gratefully acknowledged. Editing and sourcing by Jeremy Malies.
Photo credit: Tue Biering