If You Happen to Watch the Tony Awards

The connection to the Yoruba culture of West Africa evident in Patdro Harris’ rousing production of Crowns, currently running at Stage, calls to mind the 1999 Syracuse Stage production of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.  Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature, set his play in the Yoruban city of Oyo during the Second World War.  Based on true events that took place in 1946 when the British still controlled Nigeria, the drama concerns the practice of ritual suicide which, in the context of the play’s circumstances, is crucial to the spiritual continuity of the Yoruba people.  

In the play, the Yoruba King has died.  Approximately one month later, he will be buried.  On that night, it is the obligation of the King’s Horseman, called Elesin in the play, to “will himself” to death so that he may serve as a guide for the King in the next world.  Should the King get lost on his journey to the next world, the entire order of the Yoruba cosmos will be disrupted.  (For more on the Yoruba culture and cosmos visit StageView online at www.SyracuseStage .org).  Elesin fails in the fulfillment of this duty, and one of the questions of the play is whether that failure stems from an internal weakness on Eleisin’s part or from the intervention of the British colonial authority.  

The role of Elesin is complex, layered, and rife with internal and external conflict, much like the conflict of cultures presented in Soyinka’s play , which finds contemporary resonance in Crowns.  The Stage production of Death and the King’s Horseman, directed by Marion McClinton, featured Roger Robinson as Elesin, which is another reason the production comes to mind at this moment.   Robinson is currently the odds-on favorite to win a Tony Award on Sunday for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Bynum Walker in Lincoln Center’s production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.  

Robinson’s connection to Syracuse theatre pre-dates Syracuse Stage.  In 1967 and ’68, Robinson performed in six shows with the old Syracuse Repertory Theatre. Since those early days, he has appeared on Broadway many times working with such luminaries as Al Pacino, Bernard Hughes, Jason Robards, José Quintero, Lloyd Richards and many others.  His work in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars earned him an earlier Tony nomination.  If New York Times critic Ben Brantley and his colleague Charles Isherwood are right, this time around Robinson will take home the prize.    

Another point worth noting about the current production of Joe Turner and Stage’s Horseman concerns the choreographer Dianne McIntyre.  McIntyre, whose work extends from Broadway to film to dance companies such as Alvin Ailey, served as the choreographer for Horseman.  She is also the choreographer for the juba danced in Joe Turner.  Her work in this capacity does not make her eligible for a Tony; however, she was recently featured in a New York Times Tony preview about some of the people who work behind the scenes and who deserve recognition for their outstanding efforts.  As a point of information, a juba is a dance of self-expression dating from slavery. It generally involves a group of dancers forming a circle around one or two individuals who perform a variety of steps.  The time is kept by rhythmic calls or clapping or patting. 

–Joseph Whelan, Publications Director, Syracuse Stage

Roger Robinson in Death and the King's Horseman. Photo: Doug Wonders.