Death Becomes Them

the king and I: Elesin (Frank X) is a <i>very</i> loyal horseman. <i> </i>

the king and I: Elesin (Frank X) is a very loyal horseman.

by Toby Zinman

Death and the King's Horseman is an immense play (3 hours), full of big passions and big ideas, and the Lantern's ambitious production, under William Roudebush's direction, rises to the occasion.

Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning playwright Wole Soyinka based this rarely performed drama on a 1946 historical event. The king of a Yoruba village has died. According to ritual, his dog and his horse have followed him to "the other side." As the play begins, it is 30 days after the king's death, and also according to ritual, it is now the obligation of Elesin, the king's horseman, to "commit death." The entire village celebrates his upcoming suicide with song and dance and feasts. Elesin is clearly a man who has a talent for pleasure—food, drink, sex, stories, music—and among the other tributes bestowed on him, he is given a new bride (already promised to another man) to impregnate and thus perpetuate his life. But when the British colonial administrator learns of this self-sacrificial ritual, he imprisons Elesin to prevent his death, thereby plunging the king's horseman, his new bride, his eldest son and the entire tribe into disgrace and despair.

Frank X—buffed up and superbly sweaty—plays Elesin and conveys all the complicated emotions of this complex role: Elesin's motives are unclear even to himself, and the wrenching struggle between the demands of honor and the wish to live is vivid. Equally impressive is Karen Vicks as the wise and powerful "mother of the market," who can, by merely widening her eyes, stop the colonial district officer in his tracks. The rest of the American cast struggles to capture both the accents and the movements of tribal Africans and, while always engaging, lack the electric power of the real deal.

Soyinka's dedication at the start of the play reads: "In Affectionate Greeting to My Father, Ayodele, who lately danced and joined the Ancestors." It is this very spirit that Soyinka wants us to feel through this play, and in this, Roudebush's direction falters at the very end: The final stage moment gives us some jazzy wailing and a Pietà, thereby imposing Western culture on a radically non-Western death—an act of cultural betrayal worthy of the British Empire.

Advice: Leave yourself a few moments before the play starts to read about the Yoruba deities in the program.
DEATH AND THE KING'S HORSEMAN Through Dec. 12, Lantern Theater Company at St. Stephen's Theater, 10th and Ludlow sts., 215-829-900