As we waited for the performance to start, I brought my young son up to speed with the ‘Scramble for Africa’ and the colonization of the Congo by King Leopold II of the Belgians.
“What happened next?” he asked, and I had to tell him that I didn’t know. ‘What happened next’ had happened in my lifetime but I’d only ever read up to H.M.Stanley’s opening up of the area in Africa that was arbitrarily bordered and named Congo. I faltered. “Well, that’s what we’re here to find out,” I said, shakily. And find out we did, in the most exciting way possible.
Aimé Césaire’s play was written just five years after the assassination (some say by the CIA) of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the Congo, and Césaire’s burning anger towards such recent events shines through.
It’s 1955 in Leopoldville, and Lumumba (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is selling beer (Polar Beer, “the beer of the unified Congo”).
Already we see conflict between the tribes in the area: one half swearing by one sort of beer; the other, another. The play sets its stall out early. This area now called Congo was never a unified country, it says. Even before the Belgians came, arbitrarily drew a border, and called it ‘their’ Congo, there was in-fighting between tribes. In a way, Césaire is saying that Lumumba as tribal peacemaker, as unifier, as saviour, was doomed to failure. It’s a startling way to begin a play: setting your hero up for a fall from the very off. But Césaire is dealing with real life. And fall Lumumba did.
But first he had to rise, and the first half of this irresistible play deals with his irresistible rise to power after Congolese independence was unexpectedly granted in 1960 and Lumumba was declared the country’s first prime minister in the first democratic elections held in this commodity-rich country.
Through a nightclub tableau, director Joe Wright (Atonement and Anna Karenina on film) shows us the changes in the country as it swiftly transforms from old/traditional to modern/sexy. This enables much dancing, singing and colour to flood the stage while half the audience look on from their makeshift tables and chairs positioned in a sunken semicircle between the actors (who sometimes drop down amongst them) and the normal seats.
The atmosphere is casual – happy, but charged. And sure enough violence erupts pretty soon and Lumumba is arrested and thrown in jail. It’s a rollercoaster of a ride from there, swooping through 1960 and into 1961 as the fastest decolonialization process in Africa begins and this kaleidoscopic ride is rendered in such a lively and immersive way by Wright that you feel part of the show yourself, even when (like we were) you’re sitting in the back row.
The narrative voice threaded through the piece is a native Congolese shamanic figure (Kabongo Tshisensa), an old man who plays the likembe and speaks prophesies in his native language that are then translated by whichever actor he’s nearest. A figure from Congo’s past intruding on Congo’s future and not liking what he sees one bit, he acts as the voice of continuity and sanity. He’s an interesting device but the pace of the piece is so fast that his profound-sounding utterances get lost as we’re given no time to digest them before another piece of fantastic theatre is thrown our way.
Filling the stage with joy, happiness, and later – in a red-drenched stuttering staccato dance – pain, choreographer and co-director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui captures the complex nature of both the country and the story perfectly. Large puppet heads are used on the upper part of the set to represent the white colonial forces playing out their power games in doggerel verse (“God gave us Congo – it’s a sin to let it go”), while puppet vultures pick over bones on stage. White people are represented throughout with varying sizes of prosthetic white noses which gives an absurdist feel to the piece and which enhances the feeling of cruelty being ever-present.
Lumumba, an increasingly desperate, impassioned figure, is gradually undermined by both the colleagues he himself promoted, and the world powers who are only after the wealth of the country, and it becomes clear that however much he tries, he’s entered a fight he ultimately can’t win.
It’s difficult to express just how powerful Ejiofor’s towering performance is. In lesser hands Césaire’s wordy speeches would have been a touch dry for today’s audiences, but in Ejiofor’s hands they spark to life, catch fire and burn with an incandescent intensity. Lumumba’s prime ministerial acceptance speech (“Everything that is crooked will be straightened”), delivered just after he’s jumped down from the balcony via a fireman’s pole, is quite simply electrifying.
In a production as good as this it feels like nit-picking to point out the things that don’t quite feel right, but it’s got to be done. For a start, the puppet heads are less than convincing. Instead of being menacing, they bring a childlike quality to the piece, although the puppet vultures do chill the air. But when Wright does get the gimmicky aspects right, they’re genius. Hundreds of tiny parachutes literally bonk the audience on the head, while a small line of tiny figures pulled across the stage represent a line of pathetic refugees.
Another problem, inherent in Césaire’s script, is that we don’t get to see much of Lumumba the man, only Lumumba the politician. Yes, he has a wife, Pauline (Joan Iyiola), but even in his scenes with her, politics is pretty much the only thing they talk about. He’s a hero and we see very few weaknesses which can make his character feel a little one-dimensional. Again, a lesser actor would have had real problems here, but Ejiofor steers through dangerous seas with ease.
But these are very minor quibbles, and quibbles that can easily be overlooked in the grand scheme of this astonishing piece of theatre.
Well, my son is now up to speed on the Congo (as am I) and I’m pretty sure he’ll look back on seeing this production when he’s older and think ‘I was there’ as it’s destined to be one of those productions that’s remembered for years to come.
WHAT: A Season in the Congo
WHERE: The Young Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, London
WHEN: Until August 24, various times
TICKETS: http://www.youngvic.org/home
RUNNING TIME: about 2 hours 15 mins
WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: In a heartbeat
STARS: 4 (simply because of the tiny flaws, and I’m being cruel)
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