Father of the Congo with his “children”: Ira Mandela Siobhan, Josépha Madoki, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Patrice Lumumba, Sandra Reid and Oliver Tida Tida. Picture by Johan Persson.
Play: A Season in the Congo
Theatre: Young Vic
Playwright: Aimé Césaire/translation by Ralph Manheim
Review by Joy Francis
The short, complex and tumultuous leadership of the charismatic Patrice Lumumba, as the first elected prime minister of the Congo on 23 June 1960, is a challenge A Season in the Congo tries to tackle.
A decolonisation drama written in 1966 by Martinican poet, playwright and politician Aimé Césaire, the sprawling play gives a damning indictment of Western imperialism. It chronicles Lumumba’s attempts to liberate the Congo from colonial Belgian rule and highlights the unsavoury political battles that followed, leading to his suspicious death by Congolese dissenters and Western powers in January 1961.
The play opens in 1955 in Leopoldville in a bustling town square outside a popular bar with Lumumba selling government funded Polar beer. Serving as a front for his blend of African nationalism under the National Congo Movement (NCM), he inspires the people to rise up against their Belgian masters. After being imprisoned four years later, he is released in 1960 to sit at the table with Western political leaders in preparation for independence.
Despite the appearance of ‘change’ sweeping through the African continent, international bankers are in no doubt that the Congo’s independence will continue to fill their coffers. Presented as oversized beaming puppet heads with snake tails, they are unhappy with the “unpredictable” Lumumba. In rhyming couplets, they plan to create an elite class who will “police the state for free” and scheme to make resource rich Katanga secede from Congolese rule so they can plough it for diamonds, uranium and copper. Set up to fail, Lumumba spends the few months of his rule floundering amid infighting, a Belgian invasion, American opposition and UN fudging with Russia as its only ally.
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lumumba is commanding, energetic and luminous. He is presented as an intelligent visionary, poet and fiercely romantic radical obsessed with forging peace in the Congo for its “children”. His loathing of the violent legacy of Belgian colonialism and the hypocrisy of the Western powers determination to undermine him post independence fuels his often misguided premiership. He believes that the force of his moral drive and African-centric beliefs will rapidly pull the country out of an almost century-old mire of Belgian torture, murder and oppression.
With someone of Ejiofor’s stature, Lumumba’s nemesis (Joseph Mobutu) requires the skills of an actor who can hold his own. Enter the talented Daniel Kaluuya. His transformation from an ambitious NCM tee-shirt clad activist into a uniformed sociopathic dictator-in-waiting is uncomfortable and convincing.
BAFTA award winning director Joe Wright liberally sprinkles his cinematic fairy dust, conjuring up an atmospheric production that blends puppetry, dance, song and folklore. Backed by Lizzie Clachan’s impressively authentic and accessible set design, the audience is allowed to be part of the show. Cafe style chairs and tables form part of the production with the actors occasionally milling among them.
The muscular dance sequences and fight scenes, choreographed by co-director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, are used brilliantly to reflect civil protest and unrest. When played out in slow motion, with flashing lights and chilling sound effects, they give the production an emotional charge that is occasionally lacking. The cast of 15 is made to feel like a cast of thousands.
Unifying the country’s 200-plus languages through one native tongue is the mesmerising likembe player (Kabongo Tshisensa), who acts as the voice of the Congolese people and its ancestors. Resplendent in white, his compelling and timely proverbs, serving as the soul and spirit of the play, are translated by the cast.
Just shy of three hours, this compressed epic of the Congo’s colonial history hits way more than it misses. Throughout, the devastating irony of just how much Lumumba’s idealism failed to materialise in a country still at war with itself, is present.
A Season in the Congo runs at the Young Vic until 17 August 2013.