Breakfast with Mugabe

You don’t need to be acquainted with Zimbabwean politics to have Breakfast With Mugabe, though a little prior study might prove useful before watching Fraser Grace‘s provocative exploration of the titular African despot’s psychological make-up. At the very least read the programme notes beforehand, if only to familiarise yourself with words like “chimurenga” (rising) and “ngozi” (spirit) and Prime Minister Ian Smith’s part in his country’s 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.

In short, this is a play that makes few allowances for a complacent West End audience unwilling to grapple with Zimbabwe’s colonial legacy and its leader’s controversial land reform programme. Nor is it satisfied to paint the President as a psychotic Hitleresque dictator, opting instead to look at the man behind the brutal violence, electoral fraud and human rights violations. Can we have sympathy for the devil? Yes, according to director Antony Sher – provided we are prepared to be bitten by the viper we are nursing in our bosom.

That’s the price white psychiatrist Andrew Peric (David Rintoul) must pay for agreeing to treat Mugabe for depression in the run-up to Zimbabwe’s widely discredited 2002 elections. The President did indeed consult a shrink about this time, according to the newspaper report that inspired Grace’s piece. The playwright goes further, though, suggesting Mugabe’s paranoia has manifested itself in ghostly visitations from a long-dead comrade, and that his persecution of white farmers is in some way motivated by being refused permission to attend his son’s funeral during his decade-long incarceration.

If that sounds simplistic, Joseph Mydell sells it totally with a scarily authentic portrayal that captures both the smoothly urbane politician and the dangerously unpredictable demagogue. He gets strong support from Rintoul as the doctor who realises too late the limits of his influence, and by Noma Dumezweni as his wife Grace, the former secretary turned wily operator whose similarity to Lady Macbeth can hardly be accidental. Such Shakespearean parallels must surely have tickled Sher and seem fitting for a play that began its life last autumn at the RSC’s New Work Festival. Indeed, as Mugabe’s calmly implacable exterior is chipped away to reveal the tortured tyrant within, one is chillingly reminded of Hamlet’s observation that one may smile, and smile, and still be a villain.

– Neil Smith