An African hymn to hope that’s bursting with life, warts and all
ANYONE who loved Isango Ensemble’s joyful production of Mozart’s Magic Flute, played on marimbas and performed with South African township dancing in 2007, is going to love this show.
It’s the story, told with music and dance, of one young man’s journey through Africa: from witnessing his mother being shot by Somali militia in Mogadishu all the way to setting up a corner shop, 4,000 miles away, in the bustling slums of Cape Town.
The real life story of Asad Abdullahi, as recounted to South African writer Jonny Steinberg, is an epic journey. Steinberg tells us that Asad stopped reading his account after just 25 pages, because he found it too sad.
But although there is certainly loss and hardship — after escaping to a refugee camp in Kenya, he became a street hustler in Addis Ababa, before trusting his fate to people smugglers, in order to get to South Africa — it is also a tale of astonishing self-belief.
Almost as resourceful as our hero is Mark Dornford-May’s production, which revels in the theatricality of Asad’s pinball life, and requires him to clamber over doors and under tarpaulins, that here represent the borders between countries. He is challenged, befriended, shot at, serenaded, rejected and beaten by a constantly shifting chorus of characters including guards, officials, wives and relatives as he passes across the African continent.
Keeping him going is the generosity he receives — and gives back. He is, as the old Marx brothers joke goes, someone who works his way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
The vitality of Isango’s richly atmospheric performance is exactly equal to Asad’s tenacity. Mixing opera and street dance, it’s told using oil drums, boxes, corrugated iron, stamping feet, clapping hands and marimbas (wooden xylophones), with their hypnotic quivering sound.
The cast of 24 are a joy to watch, whether it be in forma- tion dancing or classical arias based on simple phrases such as the sinister ‘sorry my friend’.
Asad is played by four actors over his life, from childhood to adulthood, each with their own radiance. But Siphosethu Juta, as the seven-year- old Asad at the preview I saw, distils the innocence and spirit of them all: especially when singing the sweetly sardonic I Am Stupid.
Bursting with life, warts and all, this is a full-blooded hymn to that most fragile of human qualities: hope.