The adjectives “prolific” and “political” are hardly sufficient to begin describing Wole Soyinka, 90 now and still not ready to rest on his many international laurels, including the 1986 Nobel Prize.
To some extent, he began his playwriting career—in addition to his novels, poems, essays et al—at 24 with perhaps the first of his plays, The Swamp Dwellers, which hasn’t been presented previously in Manhattan. (Several others have been over the years). Thank good fortune, though, it’s here now in a handsome production, directed sure-handedly by Awoye Timpo.
The play is set in pre-1950s Nigeria in a house on stilts (Jason Ardizzone-West’s set, sound designer Rena Anakwe’s atmospheric heavy seasonal rains), where Makuri (Leon Addison Brown), a barber, and wife Alu (Jenny Jules) are the dwellers. The 70-minute one act unfolds during a day when non-stop quibbling primarily concerns their twin sons, the possibility of an Abel-Cain relationship between them perhaps not too much of a thematic stretch.
The sons Igwezu (Ato-Blankson Wood) and (unseen) Awuchicke are meant to imply the tension between the era’s delta inhabitants, many, like the family under surveillance, used to their environment and comfortable in it. Some, though, aren’t. Awuchicke has left, become successful elsewhere, whereas Igwezu has attempted to make the transition but hasn’t prospered and is now, a barber like his father, returning to the living-room’s very prominent, rundown barber chair.
Bringing back word of his brother being very much alive has an unusual effect on Alu. For some time, she and Makuri have argued over Awuchicke’s whereabouts. She been insisting he’s dead, which Makuri disputes. She elaborates, “Only the Serpent can tell. Only the Serpent of the Swamps, the Snake that lurks beneath the slough.” Yes, swamp superstition is obviously a daily swamp force stressed.
(Just a brief interruption to report that Soyinka might be suspected of composing an autobiographical backward glance. To an extent, that may be his take on leaving home to make his way internationally. On the other hand, he’s not the son of swamp dwellers but of an Anglican minister and primary school headmaster, which is certainly a psychological distance from the swamps. Incidentally, the Nobel polymath has long been considered in Nigeria as the “son of the soil.”)
And now back to the story: On the day at hand, several others enter the home-on-stilts, some invited, some not. The first is Beggar (Joshua Echebiri), blind and not so much begging for food, drink, and money but for Makuri and Alu to give him part of their land. He’d like to work where he’s just dropped in rather than continue his journey from swamp to swamp. Talking about the apparently widely believed Serpent of the Swamps, he sits on a stool and remains there, not contributing much for a time after three more characters arrive.
They’re Kadiye (Chické Okonkwo), a spiritual man who keeps track of the Serpent of the Swamps’ rainy comings and goings, his attendant (Jason Maina), and a drummer Olawale Oyenola. The visit engages Makuri and Alu, in particular Kadiye’s interest in what experiences Igwezu had when away.
The remainder of Soyinka’s work involves the interplay between and among the characters—the drummer only regularly drumming—as it leads to a volatile finale unfair to detail, it’s that involving. Enough to say it all but has Maduri, Alu, Igwezu, and friends only inches short of being at each other’s throats.
The actors commit to it completely, especially Brown with frequent humor, Jules with narrow-eyed determination, Blankson-Wood with the right degree of uncertainly, Echebiri with a longtime blind man’s acceptance, and Okonkwo with the right authoritarian self-regard.
The strong appeal of what Soyinka wrote at 24, when he was just beginning to examine and respond to his country—where he’s been imprisoned more than once and from which he once went into exile on a motorcycle—is his showing so up-close and understandingly one section of it undergoing the unsettling beginnings of radical change. It’s a view simultaneously affectionate and unrelenting—and very welcome.
The Swamp Dwellers opened April 10, 2025, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through April 20. Tickets and information: tfana.org
