It’s an old adage that many good plays consist of a ground floor of realism and an upper storey of symbolism. But while Andrew Whaley’s play, which won an Edinburgh Fringe First back in 1990, intriguingly charts the disappointments following Zimbabwe’s struggle for freedom, it doesn’t have a strong enough base to support its allegorical meanings.
The setting is a Zimbabwe prison cell in 1986. It is occupied by two men and a woman who have been slung in the slammer after a bar-room brawl. Suddenly, their testy cohabitation is shattered by the arrival of Comrade Fiasco, a man who claims to be a former freedom fighter but who has spent the past seven years in a cave, unaware of his country’s transition to post-colonial independence. In an attempt to reconstruct Fiasco’s past, the three prisoners indulge in various forms of role-play and, in the process, reveal their doubts and fears about the present.
I suspect Whaley was heavily influenced by the French absurdist, Jean Genet, in his attempt to paint the prison cell as a house of illusions. The real problem is that Fiasco himself is not so much a character as an endlessly shifting symbol: at different times, he represents the lost memories, dreams and ideals of both the prisoners and the nation itself.
Whaley’s play is at its best when it is rigorously specific: the youngest prisoner, an ex-guerrilla fighter, delivers a haunting speech detailing the petty humiliations and pointless bureaucracy that are a byproduct of the long-cherished freedom. I presume there is also deliberate irony in the fact that the play is set in the year before Robert Mugabe became head of state.
But, while it’s a play that demands a familiarity with Zimbabwean history, it is given a strong production by Elayce Ismail, recipient of a JP Morgan award for emerging directors, and is acted with total conviction by Abdul Salis as Fiasco and Gary Beadle, Kurt Egyiawan and Joan Iyiola as the three cell-mates. I just craved more information and rather less theatrical game-playing.
• Until 21 March. Box 0ffice: 020 7229 0706. Venue: Gate, London.
