The Young Vic is London’s most lovable theatre. The building welcomes; the programming dares. It offers danger in a safe place.
As in Walter Meierjohann’s production of The Emperor, which begins by captivating and goes on to skewer. The Polish journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuściński pulled off a remarkable feat in his 1978 book, conjuring up the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie through the memories of his servants. In 1987 Jonathan Miller and Michael Hastings startled the stage with their adaptation. Now Colin Teevan has written a version in which an entire country is conjured up by only two performers.
Kathryn Hunter – tiny, nimble, crackle-voiced – shape-shifts to become a myriad of courtiers. She is the official pillow-bearer, skidding full length across the stage, determined to put a cushion under the emperor’s feet (he had short legs). As the keeper of the private zoo, she bears raw meat on silver plates to the lions. She is also the servant whose job it is to wipe the wee of Lulu, the emperor’s dog, from the shoes of visiting dignitaries.
This could easily have become a tedious tour de force. Hunter helps to prevent that with her particular mixture of gravity and irony. She is not alone. The tremendous musician Temesgen Zeleke is on stage throughout, sometimes singing, sometimes sending out ripples of notes like a wind, sometimes speaking the words of protesting student leaders.
The evening deepens and darkens. There is news of famine. There are reports of corruption. The carpets of the palace are lifted up and found to conceal layers of banknotes, stolen from the state. The emperor is dethroned. His courtiers see the damage but cannot blame a man who “ruled through love”. How could they, without eviscerating their own lives? This is the distinction of the play: to be neither a piece of invective nor an exotic excursion. It looks levelly at the allure of a man who introduced electricity to Ethiopia. “First to his 16 palaces. Then to other places.”
