The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy by Astrid van Weyenberg (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy by Astrid van Weyenberg Sarah H. Nooter (bio) Astrid van Weyenberg. The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy. Cross/Cultures 165. Amsterdam: Rodolphi, 2013. Pp. li, 215. US $69.78. In The Politics of Adaptation: Contemporary African Drama and Greek Tragedy, Astrid van Weyenberg examines a collection of African adaptations of Greek tragedies in light of their political potential. This is a well-researched and rewarding book that illuminates its material from an unlikely angle, given that the author is neither a classicist nor an Africanist but is rather interested in the plays’ “enduring political relevance and … potential to promote change” (van Weyenberg 4). The payoff of this approach lies not in its literary insights but in its attention to the complexities of cultural context. Van Weyenberg lays out her approach in a carefully worded introduction in which she strives to distance herself from the field of classical studies while also justifying her own focus on plays inspired by classical dramas. In her first main chapter (“African Antigones: ‘Wherever the call for freedom is heard!’”), she discusses two adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone. The first is The Island, the renowned South African play composed in 1973 by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, and the second is Tegonni: An African Antigone, by Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan. Van Weyenberg surveys the adaptations of Fugard et al. and Osofisan, noting that both African plays reduce the “complexity of the conflict” in Sophocles’ play to a simpler one in which “[t]here is no doubt about the validity of Antigone’s claim” (8). She suggests that this change in both cases is due to the fact that, while “Athenian tragedy sought to instruct” (8) citizens to engage in debate, the oppressive contexts of composition and performance in South Africa and Nigeria1 did not allow for such ambiguities. Van Weyenberg’s analysis of the two African plays is sensitive and well-informed, but her study enters a crowded field: these plays have already received a great deal of scholarly attention in, for example, Kevin Wetmore’s thorough monograph on a similar topic and Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson’s excellent analysis. Nonetheless, by showing that Fugard and Osofisan use the character Antigone as a “political symbol” (36) and thus as a model for audiences, van Weyenberg brings a new concentration to the [End Page 199] ways that these plays act as cultural tools, meant to have “political potential in the present” (36). Van Weyenberg’s second chapter (“Ritual and Revolution: Wole Soyinka’s Bacchae, a Yoruba Tragedy”) examines The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, an adaptation by Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka first performed in 1972 in London. (The author rightly notes the global nature of all of these playwrights and performances.) Van Weyenberg suggests that Soyinka frames postcolonial Nigeria as being in an analogous position to “imperial Greece” (46) and points to the new themes Soyinka imports into the story of Euripides’ Bacchae, such as slavery and class structures. She also shows how the Yoruba background of Soyinka’s play allows for a new sense of human agency that coexists with divine influence. Hereafter van Weyenberg’s analysis become more complex as she raises a potential critique of the playwright, voicing—through the critique of other writers—some disapproval of the seemingly apolitical nature of Soyinka’s cosmic vision. She then, however, spends several paragraphs exonerating him from this charge, declaring that Soyinka’s Bacchae may not be political in content but nonetheless does offer “political potential” (88) through its relationship to Euripides’ play and its very existence. For Soyinka and some of his audiences, such an exoneration may not be necessary. In the third chapter, van Weyenberg discusses two post-apartheid adaptations of the Oresteia from South Africa. I found this chapter illuminating, in part because van Weyenberg turns her attention most overtly to the political milieu of the plays she is analyzing. Van Weyenberg’s discussion of memory, storytelling, and justice in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee is informative and insightful—somewhat more so than her critique of two plays from this...