Irony rattled my bones, hours after I left David Oyelowo at the National Theatre in London a few weeks ago. I had just seen him at his thespian prime performing the role of Coriolanus, one of Shakespeare’s plays. I was walking out of the building and, voila!, there was the actor, casual and in free air in the chilly London night. The embrace was cosy and sincere, and he was glad I was Nigerian. I had just absorbed with a disturbed joy his rendition of one of Shakespeare’s plays that touched on contemporary politics.
“I had wanted the play to coincide with the elections,” he said, referring to the British polls. I replied that it actually resonated with Nigerian politics. Coriolanus is a play of leadership and connection, of the highs and foibles of heroes.
Speaking of foibles. I reminded him of his interview when he ribbed his father for mispronouncing the iconic movie director’s name. Spielberger instead of Spielberg. He chuckled. The Selma star then announced he would be in Nigeria soon for a shooting. He was obviously referring to the limited movie series, Biafra, another project of how and how not to connect. If he was able to connect outside the stage as he did on stage, he was, in the upcoming series, going to connect with his roots. This is what he had said on Biafra:
“My Nigerian heritage and desire to see African stories told at the highest level has led to Biafra being one of my most treasured projects. My parents married across the tabooed tribal lines of the Biafran conflict, and it shaped my life, much as it has done to millions of Nigerians. To be able to bring the amazing talents of director Ngozi Onwurah, who I first worked with on Shoot the Messenger, and writer, Bola Agbaje, who I’ve been seeking to work with for quite some time, makes this the definition of a passion project for me.”
His performance just less than an hour earlier in the role of Coriolanus did not only resonate with the audience. As a Nigerian steeped in politics, crowds and power, its culture of alienation and elite aloofness, I saw Nigeria and its leaders writ large on stage. Ironically, it was a black man, a Nigerian in origin, who choreographed the tale.
It was, first, a play about hunger, and how the people are grappling, like today’s Nigeria, with the high cost of goods. But inside the hunger, politics of division simmers. Some are pretending to be the heroes of the people and siding with them for their own personal advantages. A character wafts the air with one of Shakespeare’s immortal quotes: “Rather to die than to famish.” Hunger can be manipulated. For instance, the inspector general of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, said the six boys, arraigned over #EndBadGovernance protests who made a scene in court by fainting, were faking it. They fomented their own theatre, a mobile and staged incarnation of the hunger of innocence. One, two, three…six boys going down at once? A poor script, if you asked me.
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I want to know whether any of them had fainted in detention before the court proceedings. Again, those who say they are malnourished should take a picture of an average al-majiri. While not affirming or denying the claim of food inadequacy, we need to be more wary of the politics of hunger. I am looking to see any evidence to ridicule Egbetokun’s assertion, especially from the medics who treated the boys. Thank God, they did not die, if they were famished.
The play shows the main character Coriolanus (Oyelowo) as out of touch with the people. He works for the state, and leads the army to defeat the enemies. Ordinarily, he deserves an accolade. He is renamed Coriolanus, and conferred with the office of a consul. But he has to secure the peoples’ votes. That seems routine. But Coriolanus does not get a routine vote. That is the potency of Shakespeare narrative. The people want to see his battle scars. He says the people don’t have to see it before they vote. He would show it in private, not in public. They label him arrogant. His foes manipulate the public who first vote for him to withdraw their votes. His political foes make him into an enemy of the people. So they force him to say bad things about the people. He does not want to bribe the people by displaying his scars. They know it. It is the victory of the soul that matters, not the vanity of a war impresario. Hear him: “it was never my desire to trouble the poor with begging.” When someone says, “You have not indeed loved the common people,” he counters that “I have not been common in my love.”
This is a strong theme of populism. And it resonates today. When he wins in battle, he receives a hero’s welcome. There is a hint of Christ riding into the city with chants of hallelujah. Only to be followed by “crucify him.” Shakespeare is under the spell of the Bible here. But populism sullies the play as the people see the man. We see it today how, not only in Nigeria, leaders con the people into rabbles of feigned love. Shakespeare says this in Julius Caesar when the streets erupt with Caesar’s worship, “If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.” Donald Trump said a similar thing about shooting somebody on a New York avenue. The fanatic overflowed in the last election in Nigeria.
In Coriolanus, the people wanted him to exercise state over status, but he thought he did that with his heroics. They saw status over state, the state being Romans in the streets. They wanted him to connect, be weak and stoop down. He would not. He is banished and he joins the enemies he has defeated to fight against his homeland. He eventually yields to his mother’s plea to return when the Romans fear he is going to humble them. But he is killed in the end by the same people he defeats. He is a tragic hero, and his basic flaw is hubris.
Heroics is good, but not enough. In his play, Measure for measure, Shakespeare writes, “Man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority.” To connect, in the modern world, is to relate, to tell them what you do for them, and tell them in the language they understand. Coriolanus hides the battle scar in private. It is not his scar. It is the people’s. He dies with it. The people try in vain to own the wound.
It is stories like this that made F. Scott Fitzgerald to say, “show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy,” like Sophocles, like Okonkwo, like Napoleon. The French general banned the play because it reminded him of himself. Our political players should read the play and behold themselves in its mirror.
