A castle where hundreds of men are kept standing upright in a dungeon until they are forced to walk away from their last shot at freedom. A castle where wealthy White Brits complain of the heat while horrors occur beneath their feet. A gift shop where tourists buy way too many fans. This is the world that Rhianna Ilube sets her debut play, Samuel Takes A Break … in Male Dungeon No. 5 after a Long but Generally Successful Day of Tours, a slightly absurd dramedy exploring the bleak extended legacy of slavery and colonialism.
Set in a slave castle in Cape Coast, Ghana during the 2019 Year of Return, a genealogy tourism initiative aimed at the African diaspora, Ilube pins the story to Samuel (Fode Simbo), a tour guide struggling under the weight of the tourist’s expectations. Genealogy tourism is a rarely explored topic in theatre, but Ilube and Deputy Artistic Director of The Yard Theatre, Anthony Simpson-Pike work expertly combining genres to highlight the surrealness and horror of playing tourist somewhere that your ancestors experienced extreme pain.
Double-act Tori Allen-Martin and Stefan Asante portray the multiple iterations of tourists that arrive at Cape Coast. The influencer, the spiritual, the overly-familiar, the uninterested, the inappropriate – it’s easy to laugh at these portrayals, especially when they arrive wearing different outlandish t-shirts in every scene and continuously interrupt Samuel’s tour to remind him to breathe. And yet, Ilube ensures that there are moments of sheer heart to portray the ones that truly get it.
In the final act, the duo settle into a feuding husband-and-wife team, Lettie and Trev, who exhibit the underlying complexity laying at the heart of this play – that the tourists are arriving at Cape Coast to experience what their ancestors experienced in order to recover their lost identity. It’s a horrible thing to do, but it’s also a horrible thing to experience. Can you ever recover from the pain and loss that came from being enslaved?
Fode Simbo amazes as Samuel, the tour guide on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Stuck emotionally and physically on a day that will not end, Fode’s Samuel shifts between a slightly-manic tour persona and a haunted, broken-down reality in his off-duty moments. This fractious portrayal is incredibly comedic, and also especially powerful as he nears the breaking point.
In such an intense play, Orange, the brash and youthful ticket officer played dynamically by Bola Akeju is a reliable breath of fresh air. Bola sparkles in every scene, cheekily hitting on tourists, practising her (better way of doing) tours and adding flair to every line.
Samuel Takes A Break … in Male Dungeon No. 5 after a Long but Generally Successful Day of Tours is a hilarious but unflinching look at complex issues around colonialism and lost identity. It’s an unmissable production that is sure to captivate.
Samuel Takes A Break … is at the Yard Theatre until 23rd March 2024
