This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

19th April 2008

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The Lion And The Jewel, one of Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka’s best-known plays, was first performed in 1963. It is very much a work of its time: like compatriot Chinua Achebe’s novels of the 1960s, or poems such as Song of Lawino (by Ugandan Okot p’Bitek), which appeared in 1966, it expresses the tensions felt in many newly-independent African countries between traditional beliefs or customs and the forms of modernity typically associated with the West.

Soyinka has been criticised for a writing style that betrays a Eurocentric bias, but this play is ultimately an affirmation of “the old” rather than “the new”. Whereas Achebe’s fiction tends towards the tragic and the tone of Okot’s poetry became darker and angrier in later years, The Lion And The Jewel offers a comic – and, it could be argued, problematic – resolution.

The tradition-vs-modernity debate may be a well-rehearsed one, but it shows no signs of going away. Certainly, James Ngcobo, director of the production currently running at the State Theatre in Pretoria, considers the material relevant. Soyinka’s play is strangely apposite in twenty-first century South Africa, but perhaps not in the ways that Ngcobo and his cast have in mind.

The narrative hinges on an unusual love-triangle. Lakunle (Fezile Mpela) is a schoolteacher who wants to marry Sidi (Nthati Moshesh) but refuses to pay a bride-price for her, ostensibly because it is one of many outdated practices of the Yoruba people that do not match his civilised opinions. Sidi, the “jewel” of the title, seems to return Lakunle’s affection but is constantly angered by his condescension towards her as an “uneducated bush girl” and by his highfalutin phrasemaking. Moreover, her sense of self-worth according to “traditional” criteria for desirability as a bride-to-be is (ironically) increased by her prominence in a recently-published book of photographs taken by a visitor to the village.

When the bale or autocratic head of the village, Baroka (Sello Maake kaNcube), seeks a new bride to add to his harem, Sidi’s growing reputation makes her the most eminent candidate. Sidi rejects his proposal – more out of egotism than fidelity to Lakunle or opposition to a polygamous system – but when she hears that Baroka is impotent, she decides to pretend that she will accept him, in order to taunt him when he is unable to perform in bed.

Not for nothing is “the lion”, Baroka, also known as “the fox”, for he has cunningly circulated a false rumour about “the end of his manhood” in order to lure Sidi to his bedroom, where he seduces her (or is it rape?). When Lakunle hears of this, he despairs – until her realises that Sidi, who is no longer a maiden, does not merit a bride-price. Thus, he thinks, the barrier to their marriage has been removed; and he asks her again to marry him. But Sidi, impressed by (or scared of) Baroka’s physical prowess, chooses instead to marry the chief.

Soyinka’s language is rich and unabashedly lyrical. It abounds in imagery, digressive soliloquising and verbal flourishes, marking his style off from the terse “realist” dialogue often associated with theatre since World War Two. The cast does justice to this aspect of the script, clearly enjoying bringing the dense text to life.

The staging is dynamic, with a multi-level set dominated in the centre by a wire baobab tree rising suggestively above and behind Baroka’s bed. The cast make full use of this space as actors and dancers move across the stage in sharp, coordinated movements; indeed, energetic dancing and drumming feature prominently, particularly in those scenes where Soyinka has constructed masques, charades or plays-within-the-play to echo Yoruba pageantry and oral literary techniques.

This insistence on meta-narrative – foregrounding the story-telling process at the very moment of telling a story – is present from the start of the play. Two schoolgirls (Gontse Ntshegang and  Lesedi Job), Lakunle’s pupils, argue over how best to present the tale, as the audience is ushered from the written word into a performed world in which the girls function simultaneously as narrators, as protagonists and as a kind of chorus.

These schoolgirls are not innocents, however; they taunt Lakunle, and they take a cruel pleasure in narrating his downfall. In fact, the story they tell should not really be rendered comically and, despite the strengths of this particular production, towards the end of the play I found myself disappointed with Soyinka’s views about gender as implemented onstage.

Ultimately, irrespective of whether the “traditional” or the “modern” prevails, the play appears to take patriarchy for granted. At first, when Lakunle uses his “book learning” to defend chauvinist principles, his arrogance is undercut by his bumbling speeches. The “ignorant” Sidi matches him argument for argument, and it seems that traditional ways are vindicated: perhaps it is a good thing that neither roads nor railways reach the little village of Ilunjile, bringing with them the false enlightenment of the city (Lagos or London).

Likewise, it seems that the urban corrupts the rural. Sidi becomes proud and disdainful when she sees her image printed in a book. The Christian Bible provides no better moral compass than “pagan” West African gods such as Sango.

But here the justification of the “old ways” breaks down. Baroka is comical in his obsession with still being able to father children at a ripe old age. We hardly feel sorry that this once-great “big man of Africa” has lost his manhood. This hints at a possible critique of phallocentrism – why should the procreating penis, sower of seed, be the basic premise on which a claim to power is built?

Unfortunately, however, the play does not explore this possibility; virility remains an unquestioned sine qua non of the right to rule. Sadiku (Warona Seane) is Baroka’s first wife, and has been responsible for procuring his other wives. When Baroka tells her that he is impotent, she is sent into a frenzied soliloquy in which she celebrates having “dried him up”, and bitterly affirms that it is in fact women who control men because they eventually exhaust men sexually: “Take warning, my masters – we’ll scorch you in the end!”

Now, this is patent hogwash. To suggest that women are actually in charge of patriarchal societies in Africa because, sooner or later, every man loses his sexual potency, is to accept that the phallus should be at the centre and to ignore that women across Africa are oppressed, raped and abused by men who operate on this basis.

That Baroka is finally able to “wow” Sidi with his virility and potency, to obtain her as a wife by a show of force (foreshadowed by his wrestling match with a servant), does little but perpetuate male-female relations that are built on deceit and sexual realpolitik. It really isn’t funny.