In a league of her own

The Emperor seems like a worthy lesson in Ethiopian history. Haile Selassie’s final days are recounted by a retinue of devoted flunkies. He had valets, chauffeurs, zoo-keepers and door-openers to perform every conceivable chore. Each morning a butler proffered a silver dish loaded with meat from which the emperor fed his exotic pets. A clock-watcher, ‘the Cuckoo’, performed a coded bow during meetings to inform His Majesty that new suppliants awaited him. A royal bursar helped him hand envelopes of cash to petitioners who discovered, always too late, that the donation was barely a fraction of the sum expected. A cushion-handler ensured that his titchy legs were never seen to dangle in mid-air when he took his seat on one of his many thrones. The script is permeated with delicious ironies. A servant enumerates the emperor’s many benefactions. ‘He introduced electricity to the country. First to his 16 palaces. Then to other places.’

Kathryn Hunter, playing all the courtiers, offers a gloriously silly, gloriously detailed essay in political eccentricity. In the second half the show darkens into a brutal anatomisation of tyranny in its death throes. Millions died in famines that the emperor considered as natural as the winds and the tides. He was dethroned by a usurper who, it’s rumoured, smothered him in his prison bed. Any talented mimic could turn this taut, provocative and revealing comedy into something exceptional. Kathryn Hunter’s talent belongs in a different league. She’s as petite as Piaf but with a sexless, off-kilter body that is crowned, absurdly, by a long and statuesque head whose expressive versatility is astonishing. Her voice, a deep rasping bass, can reach a vast range of characters, from the mincing flirt to the swaggering bully.