A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic Theatre, London, 27 July 2013

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A Season in the Congo, Afghanistan, Aimé Césaire, Bradley Manning, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Communism, Edward Snowden, Iraq, Joe Wright, Joseph Mydell, Marianne Badrichani, Ralph Manheim, Tony Blair, Young Vic Theatre

One of the research strands I’m unravelling is the presence of Americans in British theatre when the play isn’t straight American drama. I’m interested in knowing how America and its citizens are portrayed in drama and in what kinds of circumstances. In other words, how others have chosen to use their knowledge of the US.

By my count, America – as a country – appeared three times in A Season in the Congo (directed by Joe Wright) plus an American accent was deployed once more within the action. At no point where these appearances treated as characters in the full sense of the word, but rather the US was included to show its place within the global context. The US was portrayed by the use of the Stars and Stripes draped over one wall of a balcony on a side of the stage (stage left) with the lines associated with American foreign policy being spoken by actor Joseph Mydell (who is American I only discovered yesterday by listening to the NT2000 Platform on Tony Kushner‘s Angels in America at the NT Archive), credited as a generic “US Ambassador”: America first expressed its displeasure at Patrice Lumumba (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) and urged his removal; it was alarmed that the Russians were hovering on the sidelines waiting to provide arms and it confronted Russia about its arming of Lumumba’s army against the Belgians (who were swarming in Katanga, which had seceded from independent Congo at the behest of Western political and economic powers – in a witty visual, this group of influential “bwanas” post-independence were portrayed by white puppets, perhaps a comment on puppet governments in general). The other American-accented character was a representative of the United Nations Official (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) who was reaming the UN Ghanian Colonel who had been complicit in the capture and assassination of Lumumba. Not unexpectedly in this context, the US is not the force for good it often purports to be – or at least its ideals as a country try to live up to.

What is complex about the representation of the US on the UK stage in this context is the fact that Aimé Césaire‘s play was written in 1966 and its representations of the US are – naturally – colored by the playwright’s portrayal(s) of post-colonialism. This is the first time – according to the programme – that this play has been performed in English, which indicates that this translation is potentially as influenced by our own recent history as Césaire was. In fact, the biographies include that of Marianne Badrichani who provided a literal translation although the credit for the version is that of Ralph Manheim who, unlike Badrichani, does not appear as part of “The Team”.

There is also no mention of the British Empire and colonialism – and certainly it would be worth investigating whether there was a British presence in the UN force, not to mention there were any British corporations involved in the Congo capitalizing on their rich resources – which leaves the impression (whether rightly or wrongly is still to be investigated) through potential erasure of history that the British were innocent in what happened in the Congo.

The programme also pushes the negative American angle by pointing out the contemporary parallels that are undoubtedly in the play through the portrayal of western inaction and covert involvement in the events that played out in the Congo in the 1950s and 1960s and were to eventually lead to the military coup by Joseph Mobutu and his 32-year dictatorship of what he re-named Zaire. These parallels only mention Britain once, but the catalogue of American ills is a paragraph in length:

With the world geo-political situation currently in such a febrile state, with British and American troops in Afghanistan, American intervention in Syria looking likely, Bradley Manning on trial for divulging US military secrets and PRISM whistleblower Edward Snowden, a play questioning the role of America to police the world (under the guise of guarding against Communism or now Islamic fundamentalism) has never been more timely or more relevant

“…the role of America”…? Well, yes, obviously that’s the case but the programme also holds the baggage of Tony Blair and Iraq, which angered Britain even when WMD seemed likely. The programme note seems to indicate that the textual choices reflect this reality as much as it reflected the rumour that the CIA had assassinated Lumumba (as it infers in the programme).

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Fences by August Wilson at the Duchess Theatre, London, 25 July 2013

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Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Duchess Theatre, Fences, Lenny Henry, Paulette Randall, Tanya Moodie, William Shakespeare

I think the first thing to say about Paulette Randall’s stunning production of August Wilson’s Fences is that it is historic in one – possibly more than one – important way. Although the production began life at Bath’s Theatre Royal, its transfer into the West End makes her the first black woman to have EVER directed a play in the West End. (I’m also currently wondering whether this is the first time an August Wilson play has made it to the West End as well.)

Lenny Henry has – rightly – been praised for his performance as Troy, which I have to say is a monumental part and the time, energy, lines, physicality of it puts me in mind of the joke about Richard Burbage telling William Shakespeare to never do anything like that to him again after Richard III, who is also almost never off stage. But along with Lenny Henry’s tour de force stands that of the rest of the cast – each and every one of them turned in finely nuanced performances which I wish I could capture and bottle, or at least describe. Facial expressions, body language, and – in the case of Tanya Moodie’s Rose – a stillness as she watched events unfold around her, sometimes standing in the shadows on the other side of the screen door (the set was the front porch and yard of a modest house in Pittsburgh – and, speaking as someone from that part of Appalachia, the front of that house was very familiar).

Henry’s already tackled Othello, but with this Troy I would like to see him give King Lear a whirl. Troy’s journey is one that is not unfamiliar in African-American (and, as I see in news reports, also in the black British experience): a troubled past with crime figuring heavily in his early life, but by the time we – as audience – meet Troy he’s turned his life around and has held down a steady job and been married to Rose for 18 years. A core of disappointment eats away at Troy because he was never able to play professional baseball, something he puts down to the color barrier and which Rose strikingly says is because he had been too old by the time he got out of prison. Whatever the reason – and both are more than plausible – Troy is haunted by his failed dream.

There is nothing so viscerally raw in American drama as the failure of the American dream – Arthur Miller’s plays are infused with the consequences (think Willy Loman) and  Stephen Sondheim’s musical Assassins is about the extremes of what happens when people can’t get the prize purportedly offered by the American dream. One of Troy’s tragedies is that he stops his son from being recruited by a college football team – which would have been his ticket out of the working class environment with the chance of a college education. When he messes up his relationship with his wife, he is a truly broken man. Lenny Henry played the arc beautifully, beginning as a highly engaging and likable man to someone who nearly beats his son with a baseball bat.

Baseball and fences. Two other things that recur in the play. The American dream is predicated on home ownership and that home has a white picket fence around it. There was no Tom Sawyer moment with the fence that Troy is perpetually building, although it would not have been out of place. (Ignoring the racial implications of Mark Twain’s work here.) The baseball nuances I feel didn’t resonate very well with the audience this afternoon (the power of three strikes you’re out within the context of the play didn’t seem to raise the tension for those around us, although I was horrified; my knowledge of the Pittsburgh Pirates today as a multi-racial team made it difficult to hear Troy dismiss them as a white team). But you replace football with baseball and you’ve got the same analogy – it’s one of the ways (albeit highly unlikely to succeed) that children from underprivileged backgrounds can escape – and that is one of the ways I think the play speaks to a contemporary British audience. That and the ways in which we see Troy as both a human being and one whose race has clearly stopped him from trying for the American dream in full, despite at least attaining home ownership.

What I look forward to is having a conversation about August Wilson with someone who knew him very well. And talking about the ways in which his plays have become important to British theatrical life. To be continued (although possibly in the book)(when I manage to get a book deal and write it). In the meantime, I want – no, probably need is better – to see it again.