Game’s up

Lloyd Evans

18 April 2009

Maggie’s End
Shaw

Death and the King’s Horseman
Olivier

An acclaimed work by a Nobel-prize winning dramatist ought to be well known. Ever heard of Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka? This production explains all. The dated setting is a Nigerian backwater in the 1940s where a tribal chieftain has died. His horseman (played with charm and gusto by Nonso Anozie) is honour-bound to kill himself and he takes a bride on the eve of his suicide to cheer his passage into eternity. But, oh dear, those meddling half-wits up at the British residency are determined to interfere and prevent the bloodshed. This critique of imperialism, arriving years too late rather like a UN aid-convoy, is as stodgy as old semolina.

Wole Soyinka has several problems as a playwright. One, he’s not Shakespeare but wants to be. A common failing but he might disguise it better. He takes grand human themes, honour, love, revenge, jealousy, and he sketches them with Shakespeare’s light-and-shade effects: heavyweight scenes featuring high-born characters are interspersed with below-stairs knockabout. Second, he can’t develop a storyline organically and his wordy pageant feels like six set-pieces strung out on a washing-line. Third, he doesn’t appreciate the value of negative characteristics. He seems afraid of creating an out-and-out villain in case we hate him and his characters are chockful of cuddly qualities. They’re wise, gallant, charismatic, long-suffering, smiley, ribald, patient, naughty but they also seem false and unapproachable. Give us a scumbag, Wole, and maybe we’ll love him. His gravest defect is language. These drum-banging peasants sprinkle their speech with quaint allegorical soundbites expressed in faux-Victorian prose which is so unreal it requires translation. ‘My lamp oil is all but drained.’ (I’m going to die.) ‘The cockerel must not be seen without its feathers.’ (Pass my trousers). ‘The arrow does not return to the string.’ (What’s done is done). ‘The sap of the plantain is never dry.’ (Life goes on.) ‘The seven-way crossroads confounds only the stranger.’ (I’ve lost the map).‘My vital flow has intermingled with the promise of future life.’ (Cheers, darling, I’m having a kip.) I didn’t make any of those up and after 160 mins of overworked Wole-cisms I felt rather like those British imperialists. I couldn’t wait to pack up and leave.