It must be a strange time to be Noma Dumezweni; a couple of months ago she was
stepping into a lead role with zero notice, and she's another couple of months away
from a potentially career-changing (and joyously
Mail-annoying) role in
Harry Potter. Her job between the two is positively low-key in comparison,
but would be the high point of most people's year - she steps from centre stage to
behind the scenes for her directorial debut (
this interview suggests she basically
says yes to offers first and worries about how she'll pull it off later.) You can
see why the Royal Court would think of her for South African playwright
Mongiwekhaya's (one name, like Cher)
I See You: Dumezweni's family left South
Africa when she was a child to flee Apartheid, and that's also what Ben's (Bayo
Gbadamosi) family did when he was three years old. But now that he's 19 Ben's
returned to study Law in a country that's no longer a war zone; or so he thinks, but
for Officer Buthelezi (Desmond Dube) there's still a war going on, and Ben's the
enemy.
