I’d never
heard of this play, written by A Raisin
in the Sun’s Lorraine Hansberry, but I was really impressed. Hard-hitting
and complex – another fine job by National Theatre Live.
Charlie,
a white American journalist, comes to an unnamed African country under colonial
rule. He’s there to learn more about a longstanding European mission/hospital,
but as he witnesses the conflicts between local revolutionaries and the western
military presence, he starts to realize that the mission isn’t the symbolic of
hope for interracial relations that he thought it was. We see questions of
imperialism play out between three brothers from the local tribe: one who
stayed in the village under the care of the mission, one who moved to the city
and is becoming a priest, and one who traveled to Europe and made a life for
himself in the west.
We’ll
start with the three brothers. While the youngest brother Eric has never left,
Tshembe, who left the country, and Abioseh, the priest, both return to the
village after the death of their father, where they’re forced to confront the
growing political turmoil. Each brother brings differing views to what’s going
on, not always internally consistent, and what results is messy, bone-deep
conflict that gets at how the lives of these three brothers have been touched
and shaped by the imperialism in their country. Tshembe is viewed as a traitor,
abandoning his roots for moving to the west and marrying a white woman, while
he’s far more disturbed by Abioseh taking on and perpetuating the western
teachings that were forced upon them by the European settlers. Meanwhile, Eric
struggles to get out from under the weight of his own life, which is further
complicated by his biracial background.
Even
though there are a number of prominent white characters in this piece, it
certainly doesn’t come across as a White Savior narrative, and if Charlie is
positioned as a central character, he serves as a mirror for Tshembe, who’s
probably just as prominent. As Tshembe wrestles with his own internal conflict
between wanting to better his country and wanting to escape it, Charlie has his
eyes opened to the truths of imperialism. It’s easy for him to recognize the
racism of the British Major Rice, who imposes harsh blanket restrictions on the
villagers as he cracks down on the revolutionaries’ “terrorism” and will wax
poetically about the “proper place” of the African, but it takes longer to
realize that the benevolent-seeming mission is also a tool of western
dominance, a pretty-looking front of service that pays lip service to “helping”
the villagers when pretty much everything that ails them is a direct result of
their subjugation.
There are
too many brilliant moments in this play to highlight all of them, but there is
one quote I want to grab, from Tshembe in response to Charlie’s insistence that
they speak frankly with one another (Charlie, by the way, commands Tshembe to
sit down, have a drink, and talk with him, even though a curfew has been
imposed on all the villagers and despite Tshembe’s obvious resistance – yes,
Charlie is a white guy who considers himself one of the “good ones”):
“And just why should we
be able to ‘talk’ so easily? What is this marvelous nonsense with you
Americans? For a handshake, a grin, a cigarette and half a glass of whiskey,
you want three hundred years to disappear – and in five minutes! Do you really
think the rape of a continent dissolves in cigarette smoke?”
And
that’s just one quote from one scene – there are numerous moments that hit home
as hard as this.
Quite a
few people in the cast who I recognize from different things. I’ve seen all
three brothers before: there’s Tunji Kasim, who plays Eric (Nick from the CW’s Nancy Drew – he’s also in another
National Theatre Live whose review I haven’t put up yet, which includes my
remarks on discovering that he’s Scottish,) Gary Beadle, who plays Abioseh
(Clyde’s dad on The Sarah Jane Adventures,)
and Danny Sapani, who plays Tshembe (Col. Manton on Doctor Who’s “A Good Man Goes to War.”) I have to take a moment and
talk about Sapani, who’s incredible here. I’ll admit that I don’t know much
about his other work, but I do think it’s telling that here’s this actor that I
recognized from a handful of scenes in a mostly-throwaway one-off role on an
episode of Doctor Who, and this play
gives me a chance to see that he’s so immensely talented and tears it up on this stage. For the white
characters, I know Elliot Cowan as Charlie (Mr. Darcy in Lost in Austen,) and James Fleet and Anna Madeley as the mission
doctors (also Austen alum, both from different adaptations of Sense and Sensibility – Fleet was John
Dashwood and Madeley was Lucy Steele.)
Warnings
Strong
violence, language (including racial slurs,) drinking/smoking, and strong
thematic elements.
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