They Drink It In The Congo

They Drink It In The Congo

Image by Marc Brenner

Daniel Nelson

Ah, you see, the stereotypes are coming out already after only one sentence.

Adam Brace’s unclassifiable play is not afraid to take on the stereotypes, even warmly embrace them.

The result is uneven, funny, moving, ridiculous and hugely entertaining. 

The stereotypes and racism start with the title, taken from a grotesque 1980s ad campaign for a soft drink (Um Bongo Um Bongo They drink it in the Congo) and stalk the stage for the rest of this brave attempt to put Congo on theatregoers’ map.

Brace draws us in with personal and political observation and comic interludes, like the auditions for a UK fundraising concert for the cause of the Congo, and with sub-plots about finding enough Congolese to give credibility to a pledge that one-third of the concert committee will be Congolese, between Stef, the woman trying to stage the concert and her hapless ex-lover and between Stef and a human rights rival, plus several sub-sub plots, such as the fallout between a migrant Congolese mother and her Brit daughter.

And just as you are thinking this is all a bit flippant, Brace and the director shift the setting and the mood with a stunning piece of stagecraft and a scene of tenderness shattered by horrifying violence.

There’s education, too, as Brace attempts to overcome our ignorance about Congo with a crash course in the country’s history for the PR guy who stands in at the last moment for the paint-splattered Stef at the festival’s media launch. As with all such potted histories it’s a standardised, slimline version and even this abbreviated view is too rapidly delivered to be taken in by non-specialist bums on seats.

But he skewers the West’s role in murdering the country’s popular independence leader, supporting decades of kleptocratic rule because it served Western mining interests, and in fomenting the world’s deadliest post-Second World War conflict in order to maintain supplies of minerals need for consumer electronics. Blood phones, indeed.

And let's also give a round of applause to the Almeida for meeting one of my perpetual theatre grouses half-way and producing a programme with useful background – not just a Congo timeline and mineral facts and figures, but a piece on the 19,000-plus Congolese in UK (if a fraction of whom came to see the play it would run for months) and an essay on the Congolese diaspora.

It’s a shape-shifting evening but it leaves a far better taste in the mouth than Um Bongo Um Bongo.

* They Drink It In The Congo is at the Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, N1, until 1 October. Info: 7359 4404/

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