Death and the King’s Horseman

Lantern Theater Company presents the Philadelphia premiere of Death and the King’s Horseman, the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature winner
by Wole Soyinka. William Roudebush directs.

A commanding and colorful spectacle of Yoruba ritual and dance becomes the backdrop for the tragic collision of will and honor. The king has died and Elesin Oba, his chief horseman, is expected by ancient custom to accompany his ruler to heaven … until Pilkings, the colonial district officer, appalled by the traditional death ritual, decides to intervene. So begins playwright Wole Soyinka’s haunting tale based on events that took place in British-occupied Nigeria, 1946.