It was left unfinished on playwright Lorraine Hansberry's death, but the National
saw enough merit in
Les Blancs to get adaptor Robert Nemiroff and director
Yaël Farber to create a stageable version of this African epic: In an unspecified
post-war, colonial African country, a European mission operates a very basic
hospital. The influential pastor is unseen, off on some apparently regular trek into
the jungle, but his blind wife Madame Neilsen (Siân Phillips) is there to meet
American journalist Charlie Morris (Elliot Cowan,) there in search of the real story
of a country whose decades of foreign rule have finally led to increasing
black-on-white violence. Not satisfied with only getting the white side of the
story, he focuses on a trio of brothers, all of whom are outsiders in some way,
who've returned to the area for their father's funeral; particularly middle brother
Tshembe (Danny Sapani,) who's spent years travelling the world and has a white wife
in London.
