Death And The Kings Horseman: The Return Of Wole Soyinkas Enduring Mystery

The Nigerian Nobel laureates story of a royal servant condemned to kill himself after his masters death has lost none of its enigmatic appeal Sheffield is in luck. The Crucible theatre next month offers a rare staging of an extraordinary play: . I saw at the National Theatre in 2009 and included the work in my book on , yet even now I am still wrestling with its ultimate meaning. Ambivalence, however, is for me one of the true tests of theatrical quality. You cant begin to understand the work without knowing a little of Soyinkas life apart from the obvious facts that he is a 90-year-old Nobel laureate and Nigerias most famous writer. From the start, his life represents a fusion of opposites. He was steeped in Yoruba tradition with its multiple gods yet his parents were passionate Christian converts. Soyinkas studies took him from Ibadan to Leeds, where he came under the tutelage of the scholar G Wilson Knight who focused on the mythical and miraculous elements in Shakespeare. Death and the Kings Horseman is at the , 3-8 February