Hated Nightfall 1994Seventy years after the murder in 1918 of the Russian Imperial Family at the hands of the Bolsheviks, their remains were offcially discovered in the woods near Ekaterinburg. Alongside them lay two additional unidentified human bodies...
The Doorman of our Century.
Me. Great moments of human endeavour stimulate a sort of poetry ... the
mundane minds of lawyers are shaken from the attics to the basement...
earthquakes of phraseology... the sudden discovery of THE STYLE OF ROME...
He was - you could feel it through the crackling of the telephone, through
snow and hail and regiments of rocket launchers, saboteurs, air raids,
you name it, it was conspiring to spoil the moment but he was not thrown,
he knew this message called for the poise and ponderous delivery of never-to-be-forgotten
syllables, a compromise between electrification and the oratorial manner
of the late republic, Cato, Mirabeau, oh the competition, but he persevered,
and it was excellent in many ways, I don't criticise, YES HE SAYS... Dancer
Act 1
Hated Nightfall
1994
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Taking this as a starting point, Hated Nightfall is Howard Barker’s bold
speculation on one of history’s greatest secrets; an imaginative recreation
of the last hours of the Romanoffs, a doomed family caught in the chaos
of civil war. Trapped in the hands of its enemies, a Royal Family, argues
and barters for its life, but with a man who appears to be both saint and
sadist. Dancer, the former tutor of the Royal children, is now an agent
of the revolution invited by Lenin himself to oversee the execution, but
compelled by an elusive mission of his own. Hated Nightfall contains classic
Barker themes; a lyrical, passionate study of innocence, sexuality and
sophistication in the midst of turmoil.