Most people are familiar with the fable of the enraged lion marauding villages. Brave warriors are sent to defeat the lion and one after another the warriors are lost, rendering the villages increasingly vulnerable. Finally, a tiny mouse meagerly and harmlessly visits the lair of the lion and finds a thorn stuck in his paw. When the thorn is removed, the lion is appeased and everyone lives happily ever after.
Breakfast with Mugabe explores this issue on the basis of the colonial history of Africa and this history’s unresolved issues. The contest for control revolves around an interaction between Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe played by Michael Rogers and a psychotherapist, Andrew Peric, played by Ezra Barnes.
The play is a maze of ironic turns. Mugabe is haunted by a Ngozi, a malevolent spirit of his former political rival and the ancient tribal customs of his heritage. To exorcise this spirit, he hires Barnes, a doctor trained in European practices and a third generation Zimbabwean of white, English ancestry.
The staging is primarily set in the Presidential Palace furnished entirely in European fashion. Mugabe, his wife and his bodyguard dress in European attire. One of the only two exceptions is when Mugabe’s wife entertains the visiting French Prime Minister and briefly dons a traditional African dress. Obviously, the current political oppression is simply a transcription from the textbooks of European Colonialism.
The contest between Mugabe and the doctor is for control of the situation and one another, and through their struggle, they only continue to lose control of themselves. Mugabe declares liberation can only be achieved through the acquisition of power, yet the pursuit of this acquisition only continues to enslave. The doctor pursues a resolution through understanding, but his therapy becomes an interrogation based upon his own suspicions that corrupt the objectivity he seeks. Their rankling continues to escalate until the contest between the two individuals becomes the war engulfing an entire region.
The play offers no solutions but provides a riveting depiction of the endless antagonisms in the struggles of the human spirit. The anxieties of individuals are presented as the sources of the conflicts that consume entire cultures, because, after all, cultures are composed entirely of individuals. In this story, the mouse never arrives and the thorn is never extracted and the marauding continues.
Breakfast with Mugabe was written by Fraser Grace and was originally performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and premiered at the Swan Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon in 2005. The production is currently being staged at The Lion Theatre at Theatre Row at 410 West 42nd Street.
Photo by BreakfastwithMugabe.com
Garrett Buhl Robinson is a poet and novelist. www.garrettrobinson.us
