THIS version of the Oedipus legend by Ola Rotimi, set in 15th-century Yorubaland, had its British premiere some 15 years ago by Yvonne Brewster’s Talawa Theatre and knocked me sideways. The language, the music, the singing, the acting all excited me, and I found the moments of silent grief at the close infinitely touching.
I cannot say the same of this revival. The setting is certainly impressive. Although most productions at the Arcola use less than half its vast space, the director Ultz exploits its full extent by placing the audience in a double row around an immense circular mat. This is a shape of stage that goes back to the very origins of drama yet at the same time suits the Nigerian retelling of this ancient drama.
Tragedy it isn’t in this production by Femi Elufowoju. Perhaps Rotimi’s play is not one either, but the twists of his plot were certainly easier to follow last time. We start with the baby Odewale (Oedipus) being brought to a soothsayer who delivers the famous curse, whereupon the royal priest binds the baby’s feet and has him taken away into the bush to perish. Interestingly, the King Laius character is as grief stricken by this as his wife.
The story now becomes tangled with invasion and slaughter. The King appears to die peacefully — keeling over, seemingly in the palace, very puzzling — and Odewale emerges from nowhere to win the kingdom. Soon he degenerates into a ranting, jealous tyrant, and though Mo Sesay is forever pacing the circle this suggests impatience rather than the questing mind.
Only as the net of fate closes upon the kingdom does this production acquire the tension of panic and dismay. The alarm spreading among the comic chorus of elders is well shown but more poignancy could surely have been found in the silent exit of Golda John’s Queen Ojuola.
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Opportunities for painful irony are also missed. Rotimi provides Ojuola and her first husband with a second son, who performs the function of Kreon and makes possible the shadow in her remark to Odewale, after a dispute between the two men: “It is you I married, Your Highness, and not my son.” This passes here for little and is one more instance of opportunities not taken.