Death and the Kings Horseman

Synopsis

Nigeria, 1943. The King is dead, and tonight his Horseman must escort him to the Ancestors. I am the master of my fate. When the hour comes watch me dance along the narrowing path... My soul is eager. I shall not turn aside. As Elesin Oba dances through the closing marketplace, flirting with the women, pursued by his praise-singer and an entourage of drummers, he promises to honour the ancient Yoruba custom of ritual suicide and so accompany his ruler on the final journey. But a life so rich is hard to leave, and this is a British colony where such customs are not tolerated, no matter how sacred. Set against the conflict of indigenous and invader, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s extraordinary play uses Elesin’s transition from the living to the dead to examine the essence of corruption and the power of the human will. You white races know how to survive; I’ve seen proof of that... But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way.

Our Review:

9 April 2009

In Wole Soyinka’s 1975 play Death and the King's Horseman, based on real events in Nigeria in 1945, and receiving its London premiere as part of the Travelex £10 Tickets season (the British premiere was at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 1990, directed by Phyllida Lloyd), the dead Yoruba king’s horseman prepares to join his master on the other side.

But Elesin’s progress to the grave is hampered by the attractions of a girl in the marketplace, while the colonial powers seek to defer his ritual suicide for political reasons. With the return of Elesin’s medical student son from England, the outcome is both muddled and hastened.

That massively imposing actor Nonso Anozie, Cheek by Jowl’s Othello, unavoidably plays up the parallels with that role, and director Rufus Norris invokes memories of his NT staging of David Eldridge’s Market Boy in the colourful opening sequence of street bartering life, wo...

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Latest User Review

Robert - 25 April 2009:

It was great I'm glad I went . I found myself pulling on every bit of African history I know the style seemed to be Shakespearian, and content full of profound allegory and proverbs as if it had been pulled out of Greek or Egypt mythology so I had to pay full attention from the start . The protagonist didn't captivate the roll well enough for me I could see someone like kwamie from casualty(U.K Actor in a TV medical drama ) doing a better job .Iyaloja who played the mother of the market was so believable I forgot I was in the theatre, she knew the customs and culture and Sheppard the whole event of the kings horseman to the final conclusion and left you with the metaphor of a plantain tree that grows and before it dies drops new shoots and use the empty shell that falls to the ground to aid the growth of the new, but in this case as the story goes the son provided atonement for the fathers failings and shame by killing himself which leaves a void that can only be filled by the unborn ...

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