When I heard that Adverse Camber Productions were putting on a new show at the North Wall Theatre, I was more than happy to go and see it, considering how much I enjoyed their last Production, Fire in the North Sky. This one promised to deliver something similar, a night of interwoven folklore and folk music, but this time from Mali rather than Finland.
The story they tell is a history of a thirteenth-century Malian king, Sundiata Keita. It doesn’t tell of his reign or exploits, but rather of the women who shaped his destiny – his great-grandmother Koné, his mother Sologon Kédjou, and his stepmother Sassouma Berété. This celebration of women, as flawed but immeasurably powerful in their communities, feels almost modern in its approach – a fitting production for the week in which we celebrate International Women’s Day.
The natural flow of this production shares something with modern jazz. The trio on stage each have their parts – Jan Blake is the storyteller, Raymond Sereba and Kouame Sereba are the musicians – but they interact naturally and organically, allowing the audience and each other to affect what they do. A few times, Blake teasingly invites the audience to join in, and the sheepish Friday-night Oxford theatre-goers actually find themselves drawn in by her infectious joy in her performance. She even persuades us to ululate!
After the production, I desperately want a lesson in playing the instruments used in the performance. The Sereba brothers make everything look so simple and effortless, but I can only imagine that many of the instruments they play are very difficult to master. I find myself most intrigued by (what I discover after the play) is called a dodo, a kind of musical bow, which is played with pieces of wood, and amplified and dampened by the use of the player’s mouth. If they ran a workshop, I would certainly attend!
As I expected, much about this new production from Adverse Camber is the same. For instance, the calibre of the music and storytelling is excellent, but the similarities run much deeper than that. Hearing a tale from West Africa and realising that you already know a version of it from Iceland, or Ireland, or India makes the world suddenly feel like a much smaller, and somehow friendlier, place. ★★★★☆ @BookingAround 12th March 2016
