Death and the King’s Horseman – Review – Sheffield Crucible Theatre

By Clare Jenkins, February 2025

Wole Soyinka – the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – wrote Death and the King’s Horseman in the early 1970s, not long after the end of the civil war in his native Nigeria and less than two decades after independence from British rule.

Yet, despite its story of a sacred Yoruba ritual being destroyed by white colonialists, the playwright has insisted it’s not about a ‘clash of cultures’. And although it might sometimes seem that way in this Utopia Theatre/Sheffield Theatres co-production, with the white characters shown as arrogant, disrespectful and sometimes downright racist, it’s instructive to take a step back and see ourselves as others might see us. Just like other cultures have had to do with some Western literature.

Much in the play is Shakespearean in both its tragedy and its earthy humour. Based on a true story from the Nigerian Yoruba tribe, it tells of a king’s horseman who, after the death of his master, is honour-bound to follow him into the next world. The trouble with horseman Elesin (a magnetic performance by Wale Ojo) is that he is torn between his earthly desires and his religious and cultural beliefs. When he should be preparing for his ritual suicide, he prefers to dally in the teeming marketplace, bantering with the women stallholders. And when he spots a beautiful young woman, he determines to spend his last night with her. So he teeters, perilously, at “the gateway to the great change”, the door to the afterlife.

David Partridge and Kehinde Bankole in Death and the King’s Horseman

“Exuberance”

It is this weakness, together with colonial intervention, that creates the tragedy that follows. Elesin’s eldest son Olunde (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay) returns from Britain, where he was sent to be educated by Jane Pilkings (Laura Pyper), wife of district officer Simon (David Partridge). His duty now is to bury his father and inherit his mantle, a task aborted by Elesin’s arrest by Simon, and his subsequent imprisonment. The result is potentially catastrophic for the Yoruba people.

The cultural divide is powerfully demonstrated under Mojisola Kareem’s direction through the exuberance of the marketplace scenes, with their colourful costumes, hypnotic music, impromptu singing and lyrical language. They’re in stark contrast to the skirts, shorts and knee-high socks of the pallid Pilkings (the “ghostly ones”), their stiff, formal dancing at the colonial ball and their clipped speech. “Christ! Why must your people forever speak in riddles?” snaps Simon to Iyaloja, the market matriarch. As Olunde tells Jane, “You have no respect for what you do not understand.”

There are times when the contrast is too stark, as when Jane (“How thrilling!”) debates the pros and cons of colonial power first with the arrogant Simon (who dismisses the people as “pagans” and their beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo”), then with Olunde. In both scenes, the actors are reduced to shouting at each other across the large, bare stage, and roaming restlessly around like horses in a training circle.

Members of the company

“Strikingly powerful”

The market scenes, on the other hand, show the whole cast embracing an unfettered physicality. Kehinde Bankole is a strikingly powerful Iyaloja, showing fiercesome strength and wit. The women generally are a force to be reckoned with, mercilessly taunting both Elesin and Sergeant Amusa (Olusegun Lafup Ogundipe), as well as mocking the English: “What’s your handicap old chap? Is there racing, by golly? Splendid golf course…”

As Elisen’s virgin bride, Bridget Nkem, wordlessly demonstrates fear, shame at her very public deflowering, and ultimate grief. Theo Ogundipe gives an equally powerful performance as the Praise Singer, whipping himself up into a trance, accompanied by the sounds of thunder and drumming.

All told, a memorable if occasionally uneven production, lacking nuance in the colonial scenes, but full of mesmerising passion and drama elsewhere.

‘Death and the King’s Horseman’ is at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre until Saturday
images: Ant Robling