Young, gifted and black - and writing about colonialism

Les Blancs

Image by National Theatre

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry (author of 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black' - the book, not the song) wanted to create a sort of African American classicism - and the National Theatre production of Les Blancs shows she was well on the way.

She died at 34, with one hit play to her name (A Raisin In The Sun) and Les Blancs unfinished: "If anything should happen before 'tis done, may I trust that all commas and periods will be placed and someone will complete my thoughts", she wrote. Someone, or rather some people, have done so and the result is Big Theatre - serious themes, Shakespearean scale, dramatic ambition.

Set in a missionary hospital compound in an unnamed African country in the 1960s it tackles issues such as the morality of violence in the struggle for independence in the face of white settler racism and resistance.

Also on display are the varying attitudes of the Blancs, including Major Rice, a military martinet born in the country; a visiting US journalist (who seems to have shirked research on the political situation before arriving to write a feature about the mission); a blinkered nurse; Madame Neilson, the elderly, blind wife of the mission founder, a Godot we never meet; and a doctor whose eyes have been opened to the reality of the mission's motivations.

At the heart of the action, however, is Tshembe, a well-travelled emigrant who is revisiting the country to attend his father's funeral, and his two bothers: Eric, an alcoholic with a parental secret, and Abioseh, a Catholic priest. What positions will they take in the escalating violence?

Christianity has a strong role. The play is targetted more at the hypocritical "saintliness" of the Albert Schweitzer/ Mother Teresa approach to the sick poor than at Rice's iron fist, and the priestly brother is seen as falling in with Desmond Tutu's quote that "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land."

This heady brew is enwrapped by four musicians of South African heritage and linked by the silent, eerie pacing of The Woman, Mother Africa?, who at one point wraps herself around Tshembe's back, the Black European Man's Burden.

It doesn't fully work, partly because it's about the fight for independence in an African country in the 1960s and a lot of blood has flown under the bridge since then; partly because the first section is a little slow; but mainly because though the personal is well woven into the political (Tshembe was raised by the Neilsons but can see their flaws) the posturing of the whites detracts attention from the key dramatic and emotional element: Tshembe's mental tug of war over whether to ally himself with the strugggle in his homeland or return to Europe to watch TV with his wife and his child. Eric's tortured situation also cries out for more attention.

Nevertheless, this is theatre to savour and think about, not least because of attempts in recent years to whitewash colonialism as benign and beneficent.

* Les Blancs is at the National Theatre, South Bank, SE1, until 2 June. Info: 7452 3000/ nationaltheatre.org.uk