No non-white performer has ever won the Best Actress award at the Oliviers in nearly four decades. That may be about to change. I will be very surprised if Jenny Jules fails to make the shortlist this year for her astonishing performance as Mama Nadi in Lynn Nottage's new play at the Almeida. In her own way, she is as charismatic a figure as Mark Rylance's Johnny Byron in Jerusalem. Lucian Msamati as the travelling trader Christian forms the other strong pillar of this excellent production, directed by Indhu Rubasingham, in which a strong cast including several newcomers give outstanding performances.
Lynn Nottage wrote her play after travelling from her home in the United States to eastern Congo to research the plight of raped women in the world's worst conflict zone. Reading the rather pious and turgid programme before the play started, surrounded by the Almeida's well-heeled bien-pensant Islington audience, I feared the worst. Would this play be a preachy American's view of Africa, or a political tract, or a not-for-the-squeamish parade of violence? None of the above, thank goodness. It has one or two flaws, but a lot of old-fashioned dramatic virtues, including very strong well-written lead characters. Fashionable Islington and the war zone of Eastern Congo are a long way apart, but together the writer and director create a wholly convincing world. I lived and worked in Africa for three years, though I never went to eastern Congo and I don't remember much time spent in brothels. But it all rings true. Mama Nadi is an African Mother Courage, cynical and tough, running an establishment where the beer is cold and the women are hot. Her bar is a zone of peace in which miners, government soldiers and rebels have to check in their ammunition behind the bar. Like a madam in the old Wild West, she's a tough nut, and keeps a razor-sharp panga behind the bar for emergencies. Christian brings her cigarettes, lipstick, Belgian chocolates -- the tiny luxuries which help make life on the edge of the bush tolerable. There is an exquisite moment when Mama Nadi pops a caramel into her mouth and an expression of sheer delight comes over her face, before she slips back into her hard-boiled cynical persona. In the opening scene Mama Nadi and Christian are arguing over a different, unspecified commodity which he has brought in his truck. It turns out to be women. Salima and Sophie have both been rejected by their families after escaping from months being used as sex slaves by warring factions. For them, Mama Nadi's brothel/bar is a kind of sanctuary, although bookish Sophie, left with horrific injuries from a bayonet attack, is 'ruined'. She sings in the bar, and her physical wounds mark her out from the other girls -- simple Salima, who has been rejected by her husband, and leggy hotpants-clad bargirl Josephine, who dreams of escape to the big city.
Though the play contains some violence, most of the horrors are suggested rather than shown. Congo is a place so bizarre and ghastly that it is tempting to any author to overwrite it. Nottage resists the temptation to go over the top, but knows exactly how to move the drama up a gear and raise the tension. She also avoids the temptation to pontificate about the fate of Africa and steers clear of cliches about female innocence and male evil. Sophie steals from her employer, Josephine and Salima hate each other, and Mama Nadi's behaviour is appalling; at the climax of the play, her cries of pain in the final scene with Christian show that she, like everyone else, is morally and emotionally 'ruined' by the conflict.
The blemishes are minor. Salima's big speech recounting her capture and rape by gunmen sounds over-eloquent and literary in the mouth of an illiterate peasant woman. The character of the sleazy Lebanese trader Harari, while essential to the story, seems under-written by contrast. Someone should have picked up on the fact that while central Africa has lots of exotic birds, peacocks are not among them.
Rubasingham's production is greatly helped by the Almeida's revolving stage, which designer Robert Jones uses to good effect. Not a second is wasted as the set spins round and every scene is skilfully meshed with what comes before and after. Alongside Msamati and Jules, who are highly experienced performers, I will single out Steve Toussaint as the menacing Commander Osembenga, and newcomers Damola Adelaja (RADA) as Simon, Pippa Bennett-Warner (RADA) as Sophie, Michelle Asante (Webber Douglas) as Salima, Okezie Morro (LAMDA) as rebel leader Jerome Kisembe, and Kehinde Fadipe (RADA)as Josephine. Top marks not just to them but to the director for creating an ensemble in which the actors seem to believe totally in their roles.
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