A recurring theme that has emerged at this year’s Edinburgh festival and fringe is colonialism. It has cropped up everywhere: in Kiinalik, about white encroachment on to Indigenous Canadian lands; in The Secret River, about settlers moving into Australian Aboriginal territory; and in Crocodile Fever, about the legacy of the British army’s presence in Northern Ireland. In all cases, the plays have gone further than the obvious point about the injustice of theft to show how colonialism worms its way into the spirit of a people, bringing with it violence, misogyny and more exploitation.
In Blood and Gold, an exquisite piece of storytelling heavily abstracted from her own experience, Mara Menzies sets this idea in a mythical context. Drawing on her twin backgrounds in Scotland and Kenya, she reminds us of the former country’s uneasy history of colonialism before taking us to Africa for an Arabian Nights-like string of stories, all stalked by a metaphorical dark shadow.
Performed with choreographic grace and a mesmerising delivery, she tells of journeys into new lands where the delight of discovery becomes soured by prejudice. Troubled by a malevolent force forever snaking around just out of sight, bright-eyed people become broken – not by brute force but the insidious power of words, a symbol of the dehumanising language of an oppressor.
This being a fairytale world – one in which the audience joins in with riddles and favourite stories of its own – Menzies offers the possibility of a happy ending. For her, a culture’s power lies in the stories it tells about itself; reclaim them from the dark shadow and you take history, self-worth and dignity back into your own hands.
• At Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
