11 and 12 by Marie-Hélène Estienne and Peter Brook– Barbican Theatre ***

The setting is French-occupied Mali in the1930s and the dramatic action is the violence that resulted from a deep disunity in the Muslim community. Two opposing sects disagree over the recitation of a prayer, whether it should be said eleven or twelve times, and the result is a schism which weakens the native position in the face of the French colonialists. Using this disagreement to their advantage, the colonisers label those who recite the prayer eleven times as political dissenters and rebels requiring punishment and exile.

Having just read Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God it is obvious that Brook’s play fits into a tradition of post-colonialist representation of Africa. Like Brook’s cast of characters, the novel’s tribes are weakened by internal conflicts which have arisen because of the seductive presence of the coloniser. But the same problems which make this particular novel a slow and difficult read afflict this play. Characters are underdeveloped and appear very wooden and un-individuated. They tend to speak proverbially and in the abstract so that each character becomes representative of a type rather than a personage in their own right. And it isn’t just the otiose script that contributes to this stiltedness; the delivery is very flat with little voice modulation so that the audience really has to pay attention to avoid drifting off.

And, as brilliant and accomplished as Toshi Tsuchitori is, his music (played live and on-stage with breathtaking beauty and variety) was soft, gentle and constant but coupled with the monotone of the cast’s delivery and their slow movements about the stage, it had the effect of a lullaby – soothing the audience gently into a state of semi-slumber. Brook, who once wrote in ‘The Empty Space’, that drama resides even in a single man crossing a stage, has perhaps taken this pronouncement a little too much to heart and has forgotten how to make a drama immediate and affecting.

The play owes a lot to Greek tragedy and has much in common with how these plays are habitually staged; the set is minimalistic but highly effective, the costumes are simple and timeless and the characters are keen on declamatory speeches. But unlike Greek tragedy, this play is lacking in passion, the subject is great but is dealt with in too small and muted a fashion. The religious leaders locked in dispute retain the reverence of their disciples; this is not a tragedy because the status quo is not significantly questioned, the populace not seriously disaffected. For my money I wanted to see a more damning indictment of the religious mindset which allowed the violence supposedly at the heart of this play.

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