Theatre’s back – and so is a 4,000-year-old epic
Daniel Nelson
Changing Destiny opened its run at the Young Vic with an audience roar. Actor Ashley Zhangazha declared, “It’s great to be back” after 18 months without theatrical lights, and the theatre erupted with cheers and applause.
It finished with more whoops of approval as director Kwame Kwei-Armah broke convention and came onto the stage to thank the theatre’s donors and ushers, and to lead the singing of Happy Birthday to the other cast member, Joan Iyiola.
The feel-good singing might have chimed for some with the more alarming occasion in March 2020 when Prime Minister Boris Johnson advised us to wash our hands while singing two verses of what is one of the most frequently sung songs in the world.
The communal warmth arising from sitting in a theatre again will help overcome potential audience nervousness about the esoteric nature of the origins of the play: Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri’s adaptation of Egyptian stories that date back 4,000 years, to a time before the Old Testament.
Before Zhangazha and Iyiola begin to enact the adventures of Sinuhe, a royal guard to the Pharaoh, allusion is made to Egypt as the “initiation chamber” for future civilisations – an attempt to make a link between then and now and thus give the play contemporary relevance.
Politically, establishing that link might be the most important point of the evening, because it is part of the argument that ancient Greece – taught to us all as the source of Western civilisation – was itself a legacy of the ancient Egyptians.
The point is lightly made, as is the Africanness of the evening: Okri, Armah, Zhangazha, Iyiola and even Ghanaian-British designer Sir David Adjaye.
However, since the original stories are, to almost all of us, unknown, we naturally look for relevance to our modern-day lives, and it doesn’t come easily.
When Sinuhe flees Egypt he feels he has left his spirit behind – and in 2021 we are still struggling with the mind-body gap. I picked up on his subsequent menial tasks and powerlessness as a reflection of many migrants’ experiences (“You will not learn here. You will work”) – but his military prowess enables him to rise in power and influence. I feared the moral of his return to Egypt would be the overriding drive of nationalism, with nasty overtones of Nazi “blood and soil” slogans – but it shifts to the more liberally acceptable idea of being true to your spirit (whatever that means).
I don’t think this short play ever quite makes the join between then and now, them and us, and the script’s blend of the dramatic and the everyday is not really strong enough to carry the epic weight it’s trying to lift. It is perhaps a little too slight – not a word normally associated with Okri, Armah and Adjaye.
But it charms, it does make you think, it’s original. And it’s live theatre.
* Changing Destiny is at the Young Vic, 66 The Cut, SE1, £10/£20/£32/£43, until 21 August. Info: 7620 1011/ boxoffice@youngvic.org
* https://www.youngvic.org/young-vic-digital/best-seat-your-house Best seat in your house: a new way to stream live theatre, an immersive multi-camera broadcast designed to give you optimal choice as you watch a live show