The big new show at NT's Olivier is Les Blancs, by Lorraine Hansberry, the brilliant American playwright who died aged just 34. I'd been gripped by A Raisin in the Sun a few weeks ago, so was easily tempted by a preview offer to see this production of her last, unfinished, work. Both plays are issue-driven: A Raisin throws a spotlight on the life a black family in Chicago in the 1950s, while Les Blancs explores the topic of African independence at the same period. There is not quite the same sense of going inside a family and its complicated internal relations here, though we do get to know the 'family' of The Mission compound and the African characters around whom the action develops: Tshembe Matoseh, who has returned home from extended travels in Europe and America to bury his father, an emblematic patriarchal figure in a country in the first stages of violent uprising against the oppressor; there is Tshembe's elder brother Abioseh, who has integrated with the colonisers to the extent of becoming a Catholic priest; and there is his half-brother Eric, literally a product of the West's possession of the dark continent. Tshembe seems quite unacculturated to the world of the whites, which he has seen quite extensively and even married into. Indeed, his sojourns abroad have thrown him back into a passionate reclaiming of his African identity. He angrily rejects overtures from the journalist Charlie Morris to find common ground, believing that the ills suffered by Africa are simply too great to be dissolved in civilised conversation over whisky and cigarettes. He implies, but does not quite state, the inevitability of some kind of violent cleansing expiation. By contrast, his brother Abioseh follows a pacific path - 'Christ has given me no choice' - and reminds Tschembe of the atrocities of the rebels who are attacking families at night and killing children. In a mood of complete despair at finding any kind of entente, things march to an apparently destined disaster.The script is the final text adapted by Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry's husband. From the script alone, it must be said it is in several passages thuddingly didactic, with scenes that would be handy in a textbook of colonial history and international politics. Characters fall neatly into types that illuminate positions in the conflict: the bad English Major, the good doctor at the Mission who nonetheless sees that in the wider scheme of things he is part-healer, part agent of a genocide brought about by making Africans live a particular kind of life. Other characters have the same typological recognisability: the wise Cassandra-like English woman, the African dealing with his own identity crisis, the onlooking journalist trying to understand it all on behalf of the audience. Their various attitudes are delivered with the subtlety of a megaphone. This is quite different from, say, Friel's Translations, another play about history, colonialism and independence (or, say, Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Last September). One feels this Brechtian epic would be an improving read, and indeed I feel I should read it as I don't imagine I took in on a single viewing all of the ideas being energetically exchanged. At least the arguments do not go all one way, and there is a genuine sense of difficulty, as we are reminded of the suffering of innocents on all sides. The points one can immediately think of for and against taking up arms are all stated by some character or other, though I think it is significant that while we see before us the murderous conduct of the Major we only hear about the slaughters committed by rebels. Weirdly, the wise old white woman appears to give permission for Tshembe to join his brothers in their fight for liberation, one which begins with fratricide. So if you wanted to find colonial arguments that the natives are not up to the job of self-government, you wouldn't have to look very hard here. Hansberry did not have a chance to visit Africa, and there is a feeling of intellectualising distance in the character typology here. Playwrights 'on the ground' like Athol Fugard and Wole Soyinka can take us closer - I am imagining, of course - to the idiom and domestic circumstances of African life. Having said all that, the cast, led by Danny Sapani as Tshembe, work wonders in bringing emotional colour and nuance to a text that could easily come across as clunky and predictable.
The production, directed by Yael Farber, makes the most of the Olivier stage to bring out the epic sweep of the play. The Mission compound is surrounded by great dark spaces which suggest the vast territory of the state and continent beyond. A Ngqoko Cultural Group act as a Chorus, providing African language and music between and during scenes; and there is much excitingly choreographed movement to balance the wordy script, with the speechless emaciated female figure representing the spirit of Africa providing a visual anchor to the whole production. As is common these days, there is a constant ambient score and soundscape. Live theatre moves inexorably in the direction of film. The revolving stage is kept very busy and seemed to me to be over-used. It can be very effective at suggesting the passage of time or breaking up the scenes, but I don't see why it has to keep going during scenes themselves. One passage of dialogue between the journalist and the older lady Madame Neilsen turned into a kind of game of hide and seek as they clambered around the mission building as it span around. Why? That doesn't help me follow what is being said, instead it distracts my attention from it. Towards the end it looked like the stage would whack into a character's legs, but of course he moved at the right time. (Apparently on the first preview the revolve stopped working altogether and some of the audience begged to see the rest of the play without it. Request denied.) The production team of 28 (that's twenty-eight) created a gallery of effects - especially spectacular at the conclusion - that lengthened the play to three hours, which I imagine is longer than the author had in mind
Towards the end there is a rousing speech by a rebel leader urging his people to 'Kill them all'. This conveys a sense of the Greek-like ineluctability of tragedy when a people feel driven to extreme measures (it has been carefully spelled out to us that all peaceful intents at negotiation have been rebuffed; I wonder if real historical cases are quite so clear). It was disquieting to see this a day after the bombing of Brussels airport by a group with presumably the same mindset. Curious, too, to see a play with so much dialogue that in the end despairs of dialogue altogether, either between cultures or within families. I got the feeling that this is a work which was still finding its final form at the author's death, and the 'final text' can only be an approximation to something more subtle and poised that might have resulted. Or not. Subtlety and poise might be responses altogether too comfortable for the issues under scrutiny here. It is not a bad thing to be returned to a Brechtian idea that drama can teach and provoke.
