Simon Gray's The Rear Column, an anti-adventure of Stanley's years after the discovery of Livingstone, is pure revisionism. Gray goes into Africa with modern eyes; Stanley has marched off to a year-long diversion and his rear guard—five on-stage British officers and several thousand offstage natives—is left behind to degenerate at will. The play is the progress of falling apart.

It is a curious work, written in the language of the adventure movie with all the romantic myth removed…. The exceptional has been banished in favor of the ordinary; Gray, anxious to dwell upon that modern cliche, the banality of evil, robs his characters of the values of their own time.

The story of The Rear Column is one of men who fail not only in the judgment of history but also by the standards they set for themselves, and, as such, it should have provided material...