Amazing projections take us back to 343 AD and a knight with long hair and a broad sword (Tadhg Murphy). It is no wonder that the Royal Court has told us to unsettle into our seats. McDowall’s knight is called Haster, not a million miles away from Lord Hastur a dark lord who features in poems, novels and computer games.
The Appendix in the text is essential reading for anyone wanting to know more of what Alistair McDowall’s sources were for The Glow. A 1928 book called The Woman in Time by Dorothy Waites describes finding pictures of women in paintings lit by a mysterious glow. She maintained that these were illustrations of women, a symbol, a comment on that age, “A kind of social thermometer”. Interest in it has become something of a cult combining mythology and witchcraft.
In 1348, Haster in chainmail and we switch with projections to 1979 where Evan (Fisayo Akinade) in a library is exploring the “glowing” female figures in history and mythology and explains them to the Woman now named Brooke. The mysterious woman is personified as Joan of Arc, the Lady of the Lake and Margaret of Anjou and others. Presumably we could add Florence Nightingale for her idiosyncratic glow!
Part of the magic is Marie Hensel’s dark imposing set and Jessica Hung Han Yun’s eerie lighting. Tai Rosner’s video designs are magnificent between scenes like enhanced, penetrating static interference with terrifying sound from Nick Powell.
The Glow is a work of imagination and needs an audience willing to engage with the ethereal.