Theatre review: Mlima's Tale

Theatres really make it hard for me to keep my visits under control sometimes: Although no doubt worth seeing, Lynn Nottage's story of the ivory trade through the eyes of an elephant sounded bleak enough that it might be better to give it a miss, but then the casting for Miranda Cromwell's production was announced, and made it harder to say no. In its opening moments, Mlima's Tale gives us a bit of a misdirect that it might actually be what the title promises, as Mlima (Ira Mandela Siobhan,) a 48-year-old bull elephant, begins to give us a potted history of his life, the rainy seasons he's seen, the children he's sired. But these are the final moments of his life before he's brutally killed by poachers - after numerous attempts evidenced by a dozen bullet scars, it's a desperate, amateurish Somali pair who finally take him down.

The fact that they don't know what they're doing soon becomes apparent when they deliver the tusks to their boss: Mlima, meaning "mountain," was one of the last "big tuskers," and something of a celebrity in Kenya.

News of his death becomes a big story, and the corrupt police chief (Gabrielle Brooks) who employs the poachers knows there'll be more scrutiny than ever, on top of the fact that the tusks themselves are so big and conspicuous they'll be hard to smuggle. But they make their way from Kenya to China nonetheless, and this is where Mlima's tale continues: In a conceit suggesting an elephant's soul resides in its tusks, his tortured spirit follows their journey.

Amelia Jane Hankin's designs aim for the starkly simple but effective, with shadows cast by Amy Mae's lighting on plain curtains providing a lot of the atmosphere, as does Shelley Maxwell's movement: After his opening speech Mandela Siobhan stays largely silent, but his dance background comes into play as he physically gives us the spirit's reactions to the various indignities his tusks are put through.

The big visual motif is the limestone mud that serves as Mlima's blood, and which he uses to mark everyone complicit in his death. To some, like the park ranger (Natey Jones) who tried and failed to protect the animal, it'll represent a guilt he'll never shake off. For other characters, like the Vietnamese customs officer (Pui Fan Lee) who appears to have foiled the smugglers only to turn out to just want his cut, it's a shudder on the back of the neck to remind him he's complicit. Finally to the bored, wealthy Chinese woman (Brandon Grace) who ends up with a wildly expensive new sculpture to show off to her friends, the illicit nature of what she's bought is palpably part of the thrill of owning it.

It's moving without ever feeling like it's preaching or judging, Nottage taking a matter-of-fact look at the people profiting from bloodshed that threatens extinction, and letting that tell its own story. As a result what was never going to be a cheery tale does at least have some lighter moments in the pettiness and vanity of the traders. The coded conversations see the humans twist themselves into knots to explain that while they definitely wouldn't want to handle any ivory traded after the ban, they wouldn't want an old piece either. In this story, only the dead elephant comes out of it with its dignity intact.

Mlima's Tale by Lynn Nottage is booking until the 21st of October at the Kiln Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.