All the American tropes get yanked out for this farcical, dark retelling of how the Land Of The Free came to be. Danish director Tue Biering and co-director/choreographer Nhlanhla Mahlangu lead seven South African actors through a curdled, sordid tale of the American Dream, from the dash to claim land by European immigrants, through the Gold Rush, slave labour and soldiers with PTSD. 

Putting a fabulously tawdry and ridiculous spin on the traditional heroic tales of frontiersmen and their winning of the Wild West, cheap wigs topple skew-whiff and hastily whited-up faces become smeared in sweat, lipstick and grime as the frantic show unfolds. American football shoulder pads and fridges full of Coke poke fun at Yankee pride but there is a constant line-dance between wholesome hoedown cliché and genuine horror and corruption. Using live cameras moving around the vast stage, the audience is dragged, almost literally at points, between a grinning sports commentary with maniacal cheerleaders while First Nation tribes are massacred, to an auction of humans, backdropped by tongue in cheek nods to Little House On The Prairie.

Wooden banks, saloons and brothels are built before our eyes, conveying the country’s rapid growth, with bent sheriffs, greedy capitalists and depressed pioneers acting out scenes simultaneously at points. Unpacking America’s cinematic legacy of violence and colonialist brutality, we watch the links between Africa and the West develop, with all the good, the bad and the ugly consequences. 

Dark Noon, Pleasance At EICC, until 27 August, 5pm.