A couple of past successes will be coming back for Christopher Haydon's final season
of programming at the Gate, and after the success of
Eclipsed* he brings back writer
Danai Gurira for an unusually long and epic play by the venue's usual standards:
The Convert is set in late Victorian Rhodesia, where both Catholic and
Protestant churches have made slight inroads in converting the locals. Taken from
his family as a child, Chilford (Stefan Adegbola) is a devout Catholic, helping the
local priest and frustrated by the fact that an old rival has been accepted to the
priesthood, as he himself had hoped to be the first black African priest. He's never
managed to get anyone quite as enthusiastic about the white men's religion as he is
- his housekeeper Mai Tamba (Clare Perkins) goes through the motions but also
performs good luck magic when he's not looking. But her niece Jekesai (Mimi Ndiweni)
is a different story.
