American playwright, writer and stage director Lorraine Hansberry was just 29 when her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, also became the first by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway, in 1959. She was just 34 when she died of pancreatic cancer, leaving her final play, Les Blancs – written as part of the Black Arts Movement – unfinished.  

According to her well-referenced Wiki page, Hansberry, a closeted lesbian, had been married to theatre producer and songwriter Robert Nemiroff for 9 years when they divorced but they continued to work together, and it was he who completed the text from the discussions they’d had and the notes she had made on the most recent draft.

Les Blancs debuted on Broadway in late 1970, nearly six years after her death and 10 years after she felt provoked to write it, after seeing a US production of Jean Genet’s Les Negres (The Blacks). According to Wiki, Nemiroff described her response as “visceral … she felt the Frenchman’s view of colonialism as too rooted in a romantic exoticism of Africa and hoped to write a more realistic account of African colonialism and the issues of power, politics, and identity that came with it.” Wiki also reveals, “Hansberry originally planned to have a female protagonist, but revised the play so the only black woman has no name and no lines, referred to only as ‘woman’.”[i]

This 2016 UK National Theatre production of Les Blancs, directed by Joi Gresham, opens with The Woman (Sheila Atim), barely clad in a cloth strip, walking slowly around a skeletal house (designer, Soutra Gilmour) as Matriarchs & Singers – (Ngqoko Cultural Group) Nofenishala Mvotyo, Nogcinile Yekani Nomaqobiso, Mpahleni (Madosini) Latozi – approach, intoning Umngqokolo: Xhosa split-tone singing.

Two of the women are in white-face, one-of whom appears to harangue The Woman in Xhosa, a Nguni Bantu language (one of the official languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe). It may or may not be relevant to note that Genet’s absurdist play was written to be played by 13 black actors, five of whom play white characters in white-face.[ii]

The haunting singing continues as the African cast approach and circle the revolving structure, sand drifting from their clenched fists. The Woman, walking in the opposite direction, appears about to confront them but moves on through as the singing gives way to cello music. The black characters pause to let the white characters move through and into the house – one, in military uniform, carrying a cello. Its symbolic status becomes apparent when, later, comments are made about how difficult it is to keep such an instrument in a tropical climate. Meanwhile a flute restores African rhythms (music director, Joyce Moholoagae).

The indigenous tribe is called Kwi  While no specific African country is specified as the setting, Hansberry is said to have used the independence movements of Ghana and Kenya as inspiration for her background, with Jomo Kenyatta as a template for the play’s revolutionary leader Amos Kumalo (an off-stage presence) – although their fates are very different. The colonial military officer is clearly British while the doctors and missionary teachers have accents that could be Dutch but may be Norwegian (my guess based on someone mentioning a Torvald in the family).

The only American character is a just-arrived journalist, Charlie Morris (Elliot Cowan), committed to writing ‘the truth’ about the escalating conflict, given resistance is mounting against entrenched colonial dominance in a land being ravaged for its mineral wealth. He is fond of whisky and cigarettes, and immediately identifies Dr Martha Gotterling (Anna Madeley) as a potential ‘lover’, but she’s not about to be ‘romanced’ by him. It is she who warns Charlie he “cannot romanticise the African.”

Martha and her colleague Dr Willy Dekoven (James Fleet) have adapted to a life without electricity, phones, sanitation or refrigeration and are sincerely focused on the medical wellbeing of the Kwi people. Nevertheless they accept the servitude of their ‘houseboy’ Peter (Sidney Cole) – he calls the white men “Bwana” (master) – unaware his real name is Ntali and that he has joined the Resistance. His wife and son are silent presences in the background.

The ageing and almost blind Madame Neilsen (Siân Phillips), who has taught many children over the years, is a benign and beloved presence in the household and among the Kwi. Her husband, Reverend Nielson, conducts his mission elsewhere and an anecdote told later in the play reveals that, for all his peace-loving humanity, he still believes in white supremacy rather than equal rights.

The most blatantly racist character is Major George Rice (Clive Francis) whose language and treatment of the Kwi – he calls all black men “boy” – can only be described as fascist. Even though the prevailing laws are clearly unjust, he has no time for due process and is ever ready to declare a State of Emergency in order to impose unilateral rule.

This is what the play’s central character, Tshembe Matoseh (Danny Sapani), returns to for his father’s funeral. He now lives in “a damp little flat off Langley Square” in Kent, England, with his European wife and their. Tshembe discovers his older brother Abioseh (Gary Beadle), named for their father, is about to be ordained as a Catholic priest and re-named father Paul Augustus. Abioseh is a strong advocate for a peaceful resolution – or is that compliance with a regime that sees assimilation as the only way forward?

Tshembe’s younger brother Ngedi, known as Eric (Tunji Kasim), is relatively pale-skinned and conflicted, not least about his sexuality. Abioseh wants to take him back to St Cyprian’s seminary but Tshembe is opposed. As the nation state’s conflict builds to a crescendo beyond the Doctors’ place, a revelation about Eric’s parenthood creates a more immediate dramatic climax. There are clear allegorical connotations in Ngedi/Eric’s story.  

Following the violent death of one of the characters we have come to know, a committed activist called Ngago (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva) links the macro and micro components of the political and personal struggles with a powerful ‘call to arms’ that will challenge any complacent audience member who believes their moral compass is unwaveringly intact.

True to Hansberry’s primary objective, Les Blancs does not sugar-coat the extremist dimension of the escalating revolution. The sorry history of relatively contemporary colonialism in Africa (she doesn’t go back to the Romans) is effortlessly stitched into the fabric of the present action; the issues of power, politics and identity are present in every beat of the drama for every flawed character, most of whom have redeeming features, so we can’t write them off as simply ‘evil’.

Nothing is simplistic in the quest for resolution. The dialogue includes some extremely dynamic debates that reveal more about how stuck the situation has become than the possibility of finding a peaceful way forward. It becomes very clear that a fundamental failure to recognise the indigenous people’s right to their own land, customs and culture has made the final conflagration inevitable.

It is a sad indictment on the history of so-called humanity that this play, written 50 years ago, should remain so immediately relevant now – four years on from this production. While the Black Lives Matter protests have arisen out of fury at entrenched racism in the USA, the way it has been picked up around the globe proves its pertinence world-wide – hence its inclusion in the National Theatre at Home season.

Les Blancs offers us all either a refresher course on, or an introduction to, the root cause of disaffection by colonised and dispossessed cultures everywhere.

Watch it here (starting no later than 3.15am on 10 July).

Note: When viewing, on screen, plays performed live in the National’s Olivier theatre, it takes a while to get used to the big, projected voices. Hang in there.

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