This is the Large Text version of this page. For the full version with graphics, click here.

Heart of Darkness - The Radio Adaptation

by Tim Crook

The script and sound extract are © Independent Radio Drama Productions Ltd

You can listen to the sound extract while following the extract of the script on this page. For this you need to have Real Audio player 3.0 or later and a modem speed of at least 28.8. The sound file is in stereo and lasts approximately eight minutes. We hope you enjoy listening to it.

If you don't already have Real Audio player, you can download a copy.

What the critics said about this adaptation: 'Atmospheric, haunting and excellent' - City Limits 'Adventurous adaptation' - Evening Standard 'Exciting' - Financial Times 'Courageous and successful attempt to create the charge of a literary classic' - The Listener

Heart of Darkness won a Finalist Award for Best Sound at the International Radio Festival of New York in 1991.

IRDP's adaptation of Heart of Darkness has been broadcast throughout the United States on National Public Radio.

In the sound extract you can hear the voices of Gerard Murphy, Sarah Mair-Thomas, Michael Elwyn and Julian Curry.

THE SCRIPT

Voice of Conrad: The vision of Kurtz, stretcher, phantom-bearers, crowd of wild, obedient worshippers, gloom of forest, the glittering reach between the murky bends, the beating of a drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart, the heart of a conquering darkness. The wilderness of triumphs.

Voice of Marlow: The vision of Kurtz, his abject pleading, his abject threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of his soul. Immense and wide stare, embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe.

Voice of Kurtz: The horror..the horror!...

Voice of Conrad: The dusk is falling. Tall marble fireplace cold and monumental in its whiteness. The grand piano gleams darkly, like a sombre, polished sarcophagus.

Voice of Conrad: His intended all in black. Her pale head floating in the dusk. For her he had died only yesterday. Such desolation, such sorrow.

Intended woman: I had heard you were coming. Well, it has been a year..I have survived.

Marlow: Here..He asked me to give you this..

Intended woman: You knew him well?

Marlow: Intimacy grows quickly out there. I knew him as well as it is possible for one man to know another.

Intended woman: And you admired him. It was impossible to know him and not to admire him. Was it?

Marlow: He was a remarkable man. It was impossible not to..

Intended woman: ...love him..How true! How true!...But when you think that no-one knew him so well as I! But when you think that no-one knew him so well as I! I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.

Marlow: You knew him best.

Intended woman: You were his friend. His friend. You must have been, if he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you- and oh! I must speak. I want you- you who have heard his last words- to know I have been worthy of him..It is not pride...Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better than anyone on earth- he told me so himself. And since his mother died I have had no one....no-one to..to..

Intended Woman: You see, I loved that man. My family disapproved of our engagement. He was not rich enough. He did not have the means, so he was continually struggling, and it will be my eternal tragedy that he went out there to make such fortune that would drive the poverty from his life and impress my family....Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once? He drew men towards him by what was best in them. It is the gift of the great...But you have heard him! You know!

Voice of Kurtz: The horror, the horror!

Marlow: Yes, I know.

Intended Woman: What a loss to me- to us! To the world....I have been very happy- very fortunate- very proud. Too fortunate. Too happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy for...for life...And of all this...of all his promise..and of all his greatness, of his generous mind, of his noble heart, nothing remains- nothing but a memory..You and I..

Marlow: We shall always remember him.

Intended Woman: No. It is impossible that all this should be lost- that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing - but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too - I could not perhaps understand - but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.

Marlow: His words will remain.

Intended Woman: And his example. Men looked up to him. His example shone in every act. His example.

Marlow: True..his example too. Yes, his example. I forgot that.

Intended Woman: But I do not. I cannot. I cannot believe - not yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him again, that nobody will see him again, never, never, never...

Voice of Marlow: Never see him! I see him clearly enough now. I shall see his eloquent phantom as long as I live. I shall see her too, tragic and familiar. Shade, stretching out her black arms, with clasped pale hands across the fading light. She resembles that other tragic woman, bedecked with powerless charms, stretching bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal stream, the stream of darkness.

Intended Woman: He died as he lived.

Marlow: His end was in every way worthy of his life.

Intended Woman: And I was not with him.

Marlow: Everything that could be done..

Intended Woman: Ah, but I believed in him more than anyone on earth - more than his own mother, more than - himself. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.

Marlow: Don't, please..

Intended Woman: Forgive me..I - I have mourned so long in silence - in silence..You were with him - to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no-one to hear...

Marlow: To the very end...I heard his very last words..

Intended Woman: Repeat them..I want..I want..something..something to...to live with..

Intended Woman: His last word..to live with..Don't you understand, I love him- I loved him..I loved him!

Marlow: The last word he pronounced was...your name.

Voice of Kurtz: I wanted justice...only justice...

Voice of Marlow: I couldn't, I could not tell her.

Voice of Kurtz: The horror, the horror!

Voice of Marlow: It would have been too dark, too dark altogether..

Voice of Conrad: Marlow ceases talking, sitting apart, indistinct and silent, In the pose of a meditating Buddha. The offing is barred by a black bank of clouds, Tranquil waters of the Thames flow sombre... flowing under overcast skies to the uttermost ends of the earth..

Voices of Conrad, Marlow and Kurtz: ...leading to the heart of an immense darkness.

There are many websites about Joseph Conrad which you can visit, including:

The Joseph Conrad Society which operates out of the Polish cultural centre in west London

Notes on Heart of Darkness

A page devoted to Conrad and links to other related sites

The entire text of Heart of Darkness

The entire text of The Secret Agent

You can also see the entire script of this adaptation of Heart of Darkness

The cast of this adaptation included: Gerard Murphy, Michael Elwyn, Julian Curry, Elizabeth Power, David Peart, Sarah Mair-Thomas, Stephen Thorne, Edmund Dehn, John Talbot, Paa 'C' Quaye, Clairvalle Aboh, Richard Shannon and Alec Linstead.

The music was specially composed for IRDP by Alan Gibbs and was performed by Alan Gibbs, Vivienne Whysall and Tony Maloney.

African sound effects recorded by Julia Tagg.

You can visit our page about Gerard Murphy and our page about Alan Gibbs and Vivienne Whysall.