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11 and 12
Review

11 and 12

June 5 2010

11 AND 12, Sydney Theatre, June 3-13 2010; Sydney Theatre Company by arrangement with Arts Projects Australia, co-produced by barbicanbite10, London; C.I.C.T. / Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris; Grotowski Institute, Wroclaw and presented in association with William Wilkinson for Millbrook Productions Ltd

A LONG TIME in the making and a long time getting to Sydney, Peter Brook’s much anticipated new work (made with long-time collaborator Marie Helene Estienne) 11 and 12 is exquisite to watch and to listen to.

Adapted by Estienne from Amadou Hampate Ba’s The Life and Education of Tierno Bokar – the Sage of Bandiagara, it tells of Bokar’s experience as a Muslim, Sufi, thinker and teacher in French colonial west Africa in the late 1930s. Part of that experience was the divisive and deadly consequence of a local holy war over whether a certain prayer should be recited 11 or 12 times. If this sounds absurd and even comical, it is; but wait – there’s more.

Like all the best African story-telling, 11 and 12 is at once simple and complex. The surface shimmers with clarity but underneath, the subtexts and other layers of meaning are dense and obtuse. Part of the charm, however, is that enjoyment and understanding can be gleaned from the seemingly straightforward story, while the subterranean depths can be plumbed either at leisure or inadvertently. Hours later a blinding flash of insight tells you something has been beavering away in your subconscious and is finally ready to be revealed.

It’s a style of storytelling that has its counterparts in Australian indigenous culture: if you savoured the discursive, unhurried playfulness of, say, Ten Canoes, there’s every chance you will recognise the similarities and pleasures in 11 and 12. A European-Western audience, not accustomed to the circuitousness of Africa-time narrative needs to give up to it and go with it; then the richness and delights are there for the taking.

The play is set in what we know as Mali (French West Africa) where French civil servants casually insult their black underlings and live a sweaty but luxurious life as petty tyrants and eagerly corruptible petit bourgeois. It would be comforting to see 11 and 12 as a history play, but its relevance and contemporaneity are swingeing. Its underlying message also has contemporary relevance: religious tolerance and universal love. So simple and yet, it seems, so horribly unachievable.

11 and 12

Peter Brook has assembled a typically multi-ethnic (all male) cast to tell of Bokar’s life journey to a lonely death in exile with actors originating from Palestine, the US, Nigeria, Spain, Mali and France, accompanied – at the side of the stage – by Japanese composer-musician Toshi Tsuchitori. His playing of multi-ethnic instruments underscores, punctuates and enhances the action throughout the play’s 100+ minutes; and is a musical reflection of the production’s setting: simplicity, imagination, colour and form.

Visually, the show is as rewarding as the play and playing: the open expanse of the stage is focused on a large rusty-earth red floor cloth, strewn white sand and a couple of carved stump-trees and carved logs that double as tables and seating when needed. All these elements are used in turn to suggest a boat, an abyss and graves in a cemetery. Speaking after the performance to welcome the cast and crew, STC executive producer Jo Dyer noted, only half in jest, that she hoped there were designers in the audience – to take note of the sumptuous visual effects to be gained from employing imagination rather than dollars. (Well, she didn’t say that exactly, but that’s what she meant.) She also mentioned the value added elements of Philippe Vialatte’s lighting and Helene Patarot’s costumes – and she’s right.

All in all, 11 and 12 is a moving and often gently funny meditation on the best and worst of human qualities. It’s also a dazzling ensemble effort from the actors who take on all roles – male, female, black and white: Antonio Gil Martinez, Makram J Khoury, Tunji Lucas, Jared McNeill, Khalifa Natour, Abdou Ouologuem and Maximilien Seweryn. The Sydney season is short and is the company’s only stop in Australia: I urge you to take the opportunity to savour this rare and exotic theatrical treat – with the emphasis on “theatrical”.

 

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