Anthem of Life Part 1, Theatre Prospero. Photo by Joselito Angeles

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“In the time before time….” The gods were busy creating and discussing and arguing, and generally keeping an eye on cosmology. Because that’s what Zulu gods do. They’re busy.

Anthem of Life, Theatre Prospero. Photo by Jose Angelito

Actually, their all-seeing eyes are upon us, literally, in Tololwa Mollel’s Anthem of Life. They watch us and each other, in full stares and suspicious, sideways glances in the Zulu creation epic that comes to the stage — not one but two stages, and the space between them — at Theatre Prospero.

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Which is all the more remarkable since they are giant puppets, gorgeous, glistening, burnished heads created by Randall Fraser for Mark Henderson’s inventive production. The play, part one of a planned trilogy, is Mollel’s adaptation of a door-stopper Zulu verse epic by the South African poet Mazisi Kunene. And it’s a remarkably vivid, spirited affair, framed by the efforts of a young storyteller to capture on paper a mythology full of big personalities, and a race of humans, Abantu in Zulu, who seem to have a natural tendency to celebrate, to sing, to dance (choreographers: Mpoe Mogale and Enakshi Sinha) on every available occasion.

Which is the fun and the charm of Anthem of Life, a multi-disciplinary theatrical extravaganza with nine performers and a five-member band of versatile African drummers.

The gods are a a fractious bunch; husbands and wives, daughters and parents do not always agree. Hey, this is your chance to see a god exit in a huff. The sun, the moon, the stars are a big success, and then, because the world is empty, enter human beings.

Anthem of Life Part 1, Theatre Prospero. Photo by Joselito Angeles.

The larger of the two stages of Ami Farrow’s cunning design, with its horseshoe-shaped frame (across which her projections play), is an outsized drum that the god of thunder and lightning who is, I think, in charge of volcanoes, makes excellent use of, with his feet. Godly tantrums (with percussion back-up) resonate wonderfully well under the circumstances.

“The charm of life,” a beautiful outsized Fabergé egg design by Farrow, gets passed around, and lost, and found, in the course of the play. At the heart of Anthem of Life is the godly inspiration that creation is incomplete without people who are, it turns out, a great achievement and a big headache.

There’s no consensus about them in the heavens, a conflict that’s at the heart of Anthem of Life. Some gods think that people “are a big mistake,” not least because humans turn out to be creative, challenging, and powerful, themselves. A god gives birth to vicious wild dogs (impressively toothy creations by Fraser), but humans manage to figure that out, too.

Anthem of Life Part 1, Theatre Prospero. Photo by Joselio Angeles.

There are gods who are all for total annihilation of these uppity wayward human creatures; others are of the view that a creation should not be destroyed; others look for compromise. Humans have never been an easy issue, apparently. And then there are the hot-button questions, profound but playfully set forth, of whether humans should be flawed (“whatever is perfect loses the ability to improve and adapt”) and whether, crucially, they should be death-proof or mortal. Ah, there’s the Zulu take on questions that have absorbed Western writers forever, too.  There’s more to come in parts two and three of Mollel’s trilogy.

Meanwhile, his part one adaptation is witty and colloquial. The cast, who play masked gods, unmasked humans, and (in inventive Fraser designs) animals, negotiate it in solo asides and group chants. They create a non-stop swirl of theatrical images in Henderson’s production. And there’s cause for celebratory dance numbers all along the way.

REVIEW

Anthem of Life, part 1

Theatre: Theatre Prospero

Written by: Tololwa Mollel, adapting Anthem of the Decades: A Zulu Epic by Mazisi Kunene

Directed by: Mark Henderson

Starring: Brennan Campbell, Patricia Darbasie, Lebo Disele, Andrés Felipe, Beshel Francis, Sokhana Mfenyana, Vwede Oturuhoyi, Enakshi Sinha, Valentine Ukoh

Where: Alberta Avenue Community Centre, 9210 118 Ave.

Running: through July 6

Tickets: edmontonarts.ca