Chiwetel Ejiofor as Patrice Lumumba
The feel of participation is immediate: we are sat on plastic and rusted metal chairs in front of colourful 50s round tables. The actors – all black – are already on the stage to welcome the crowds. They are dancing to Congo’s music; giggling; grimacing and waving to the audience that is all the way up; on the balcony. The room is dark and air-conditioned but the vigorous African spirit snugly unwinds you. And the story of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected leader, begins with a transfer to an African early morning where saleswomen walk up and down the streets with big baskets on the top of their heads. “I have been there”, I think when Chiwetel Ejiofor’s voice as Patrice Lumumba establishes his powerful presence; from now until he is forcefully silenced by death.
“A Season in the Congo”, a 1966 play by Aimé Césaire, at the Young Vic in London, wraps Africa’s turbulent times in a two-hour musical, theatrical, dancing but above all tremendously human show. Since his election in 1960, and until he was murdered by rebel troops (allegedly with the Western support) in 1961, Patrice Lumumba fought for a post-colonial ideal and a united Africa. The portrayal of his positive personality and dedication to justice makes him vulnerable in our eyes; a child you wish you could forever protect from the world’s atrociousness.
Lumumba’s wife (Joan Iyiola) role, like she has escaped from a Greek tragedy, is to prevent the bad from happening. She is crying over her husband’s political involvement; she is protesting against his naiveness, and she is warning him with dreams and omens. But she is there only for the audience to be warned. Lumumba loves his wife but Africa has been inside his heart long before she has.
The satire is swimmingly applied through an ensemble of man-sized, carnival looking puppets in the role of Western bankers, who are “distributing” Katanga’s region minerals. The comedy is successful when the UN Secretary General – a black actor with a fluorescent blonde wig – repeats himself: “I am neutral”. Not to forget the King’s of Belgium, Badouin II, monologue about how Belgium is generously giving back Congo to its people after having built it at Belgian citizens’ expenses. The intervention of America and the Soviet Union is shown by flags that serve as bodies, and animal skulls for heads that mouth the words of the nations. If all actors are black, guess how we distinguish the Westerners from the Congolese: the Westerners wear long, piggy noses. Very imaginative; very fine art.
An oral narrator couldn’t miss from a story about Africa. Kabongo Tshisensa talks in one of Congo’s languages, and his words are narrated in English by the other actors on stage. He is one of those tribal men whom you recognise as wise. His words are not always clear but you can see the future in his eyes. All the actors have perfectly stylized their speech according to the Congolese affluence.
The movement in the play is vital. Twenty to twenty-five actors were left in the hands of co-director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who choreographed them in a variety of situations: a triumphant crowd, fighters and massacre victims, intimate lovers and at the end assassins of their most loyal man: Patrice Lumumba. The slow motion of his death prolonged our emotions and my tears.
The puppets
I came I saw I wrote 