Theater News

REVIEW ROUNDUP: Nikki Amuka-Bird, David Harewood, et al. Open in Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes

Nikki Amuka-Bird and David Harewood
in Welcome to Thebes
(Photo courtesy of the company)
Nikki Amuka-Bird and David Harewood
in Welcome to Thebes
(Photo courtesy of the company)

Nikki Amuka-Bird and David Harewood have officially opened in Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes, playing in the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre in London. Richard Eyre has directed the production, which is scheduled to continue through August 18.

The play modernizes the Greek myth about the first democratically elected president of Thebes. The company also features Madeline Appiah, Rakie Ayola, Omar Brown, Jessie Burton, Jacqueline Defferary, Daniel Fine, Karlina Grace, Rene Gray, Tracy Ifeachor, Irma Inniss, Chuk Iwuji, Alexia Khadime, Ferdinand Kingsley, Aicha Kossoko, Simon Manyonda, Bruce Myers, Pamela Nomvete, Calre Perkins, Victor Power, Daniel Poyser, Joy Richardson, Vinette Robinson, Zara Tempest-Walters, and Michael Wildman.

The production has been designed by Tim Hatley, with lighting by Neil Austin, music by Stephen Warbeck, choreography by Scarlett Mackmin, and sound by Rich Walsh.

Reviews from the major dailies and online sources have appeared and critics are responding warmly to the politics and ambition in Buffini’s script. They are also praising Richard Eyre’s production and many of the performances.

Among the reviews are:

Daily Telegraph
Welcome to Thebes, National Theatre, review
“…the play, powerfully directed by Richard Eyre with a terrific design by Tim Hatley that suggests both an ancient Greek palace and a war-torn African city, undoubtedly grips.”

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“Nikki Amuka-Bird is charismatic and moving as Eurydice. Harewood is wonderfully funny in the scene in which Theseus tries to seduce his Theban hostess, and affecting as he realises his own impending tragedy. There is strong support from Vinette Robinson as Antigone and Chuk Iwuji as a vile but charismatic warlord.”

Evening Standard
Welcome to Thebes is a very African Greek tragedy
“Ambitious, at times impudent, and blazingly topical, its subjects include tyranny, justice, loss, the elaborate ballet of democracy and the strange fiction that is ‘truth and reconciliation’.”

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“David Harewood is imposing as Theseus: muscular, poised, arrogant. He conveys pomp. As Eurydice, Nikki Amuka-Bird has a cool dignity. There’s appealing work throughout the large cast, marshalled with characteristic fluency by Richard Eyre. Particularly eye-catching are Chuk Iwuji and Daniel Poyser. The Olivier’s space is well used, and Tim Hatley’s dilapidated design evokes both ancient and modern.”

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“While this is a substantial and politically serious piece, it’s tonally uneven. Some of the Greek motifs are clumsily introduced, and the focus is uncertain. The drama has no true centre and, although the story is impressive in scale, the writing is bumpy — at times incendiary but marred by cliché. It’s busy and interesting yet also uncomfortably baggy.”

The Guardian
Welcome to Thebes
“Moira Buffini is not the first dramatist to seek to marry modern politics and ancient myths. In postwar France, playwrights such as Anouilh, Cocteau and Sartre sought a similar alliance. But much as I love the scope and ambition of Buffini’s play, there runs through it an unresolved contradiction between free will and fate.”

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“There is also a host of vibrant performances. Nikki Amuka Bird’s Eurydice conveys a refusal to be bullied by male superpowers. David Harewood exudes cocksure charisma as the Athenian leader. And there is first-rate support from Chuck Iwuji as the Dionysiac Tydeus, Rakie Ayola as his vengeful accomplice and Bruce Myers as the androgynous Tiresias.”

The Times (registration required)
Welcome to Thebes at the Olivier, SE1
“My inner intellectual skiver flinched at the idea of a play using Greek myths in a context of modern Africa to explore ideas about women in politics. It could be hell. But it’s not. It’s thrilling. Moira Buffini’s strange and daring play is directed with brio by Sir Richard Eyre: it is moving, wise, funny, horrifying, and studded with beautifully judged swearwords.”

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“[The play is] full of resonances you weren’t expecting, jokes you didn’t see coming, tension becoming absurd and then tragic when a conference table becomes the bitterest of biers. It raises huge questions with wit. And in Bruce Myers’s camp hag-prophet Tiresias it has the authentic thrill and terror of myth. Go. Take a politician.”

The Stage
Welcome to Thebes
“Moira Buffini’s radical recasting of the tale of Antigone offers both a feminist perspective and a contemporary resonance.

Whatsonstage.com
Welcome to Thebes
“Loosely based on the recent political upheavals in Liberia, Moira Buffini’s Welcome to Thebes in the Olivier is a wonderfully rich and fascinating play about women in coalition politics, colonial compromise in post-revolutionary shake-out, and Third World self-determination.”

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“None of it is particularly uplifting: if this is the way the world is going, then the sooner we tune out of it the better, you feel. But the performances have such spirit, backed up by the onstage percussive music of Stephen Warbeck, that you come out feeling ennobled by people’s perennial ability to see their struggle in the context of global and political tectonic shifts; and, in the theatre, the ongoing resonance of the great myths and stories.”