宏大的叙事……威尔·阿蒂奥莫、阿德奥拉·耶米坦和安东尼娅·莱伊沃拉在《索科托往事》中的演出。摄影：特里斯特拉姆·肯顿/《卫报》《索科托往事》剧评——一堂关于非洲内部奴隶制的生动历史课北安普顿皇家德恩盖特剧院伊努阿·埃拉姆斯在其最新剧作中，展现出斯托帕德式或弗莱恩式的趣味，将复杂议题转化为引人入胜的戏剧。
在过去十年里，埃拉姆斯创作了一系列以现代尼日利亚为中心的创新且具教育意义的戏剧，从《理发店编年史》开始，该剧通过理发这一日常行为，对男性气质和政治进行了犀利的评论。
Expansive narrative … Will Atiomo, Adeola Yemitan and Antonia Layiwola in Once Upon A Time In Sokoto. A Time In Sokoto review – exuberant history lesson on intra-African slavery Royal and Derngate, Northampton Inua Ellams displays a Stoppardian or Fraynian relish in turning complex topics into enjoyable theatre in his latest play ver the last decade, Inua Ellams has written inventive and educational plays centred on modern Nigeria, starting with Barber Shop Chronicles in which hair care allowed cutting commentary on masculinity and politics.
尽管《降雨的半神》曾绕道奥林匹斯山，这体现了埃拉姆斯在结构上的趣味，但其焦点仍是后殖民时代的尼日利亚。他将契诃夫的《三姐妹》巧妙地移植到20世纪60年代的非洲，展现了英国帝国统治者卢加德勋爵迫使这位剧作家的祖国从多种文化中分离出来所引发的动荡。
Although The Half God of Rainfall had a detour to Mount Olympus, typical of Ellams’s structural fun, the focus was postcolonial Nigeria, his superb relocation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters to 1960s Africa showing ructions resulting from British imperial ruler Lord Lugard coercing the playwright’s birth nation from multiple cultures.
在横跨1865年至1903年（卢加德镇压当地抵抗运动时期）的24个场景中，埃拉姆斯的新剧《索科托往事》描绘了前殖民时期的历史，主要围绕西非索科托哈里发国众多的埃米尔国展开，但也穿插了对利比亚和埃及的描绘。
Across 24 scenes set from 1865 to 1903, when Lugard crushed local resistance, Ellams’s new play, Once Upon A Time In Sokoto, maps pre-colonial history, mainly around the many emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa but with diversions to Libya and Egypt.
该剧运用了传统叙事的元素——观众学习用豪萨语进行的一呼一应吟唱——宏大的叙事以齐纳里（安东尼娅·莱伊沃拉饰）为核心，她是一位母系上层阶级的企业家；以及纳菲萨（阿德奥拉·耶米坦饰），她曾是齐纳里的奴隶，正争取更多的自主权。埃拉姆斯暗示了该文化中早熟的女性主义，同时也展示了其局限性。当齐纳里选择不要孩子时，她的丈夫哈迪鲁（巴约·格巴达莫西饰）援引宗教法律，将纳菲萨纳为第二个能生育的妻子。
Using aspects of traditional storytelling – the audience learns a call-and-response chant in the Hausa language – the expansive narrative is anchored to Zinari (Antonia Layiwola), a matriarchal upper-class entrepreneur, and Nafisa (Adeola Yemitan), her former slave who fights for more agency. Suggesting a precocious feminism in the culture, Ellams also illustrates its limits. When Zinari chooses to be childless, her husband, Hadiru, (Bayo Gbadamosi) cites religious law to take Nafisa as a second, fecund wife.
对许多人来说，这部剧将是一堂历史课，尽管它比大多数学校更生动、更具吸引力。然而，埃拉姆斯的国际课程所教授的，要深刻得多。悲剧与喜剧……阿蒂奥莫和莱伊沃拉在《索科托往事》中的演出。
For many, the play will be a history lesson, though more exuberant and engaging than most schools. Ellams’s international curriculum, though, teaches much deeper. Tragedy and comedy … Atiomo and Layiwola in Once Upon A Time In Sokoto.
关于奴隶制的道德恐怖，在此处表现为非洲内部的奴役现象，其中还冷峻地揭示了其经济逻辑：“纳菲萨的价值已经翻了四倍，增长了433%，达到一百一十四万。”这里的货币是科伊里——一种海蜗牛的贝壳——这展现了这一经济体系（包括字面意义上的“壳公司”）如何催生出竞争、税收和通货膨胀，而当国际掠食者——由英国教育背景的优素福（威尔·阿蒂奥莫饰）代表——用进口科伊里充斥市场时，经济便遭遇了灾难性的崩溃。
Moral horror about slavery, in this case intra-African, incorporates a cold-eyed account of its economics: “Nafisa’s value has quadrupled 433% to one million, one hundred and forty thousand.”The currency is cowries, sea snail shells, showing how this economy – including literal shell companies– develops competition, taxation, inflation and a catastrophic crash when international predators – represented by the British-schooled Yusufu (Will Atiomo) – flood the market with imported cowries.
在我看来，这一经济细节比詹姆斯·格雷厄姆的J·M·凯恩斯戏剧《生活标准》更具财政洞察力。另一个探讨的主题是语言学：通过围绕不同字母表之争以及殖民者引入外来隐喻的冲突，展现了语言的演变过程。“有很多方法可以剥猫皮”这句话让爱猫成狂的埃及人感到不安。我们还了解到“博科圣地”一词的含义，后来这一名称被尼日利亚的一个圣战组织所采用。
This felt to me more fiscally astute than James Graham’s JM Keynes play, The Standard Of Living Another subject tackled is philology, developing languages shown through clashes over rival alphabets and the colonisers’ import of exotic metaphors: “Many ways to skin a cat” alarms pro-feline Egypt. We learn the meaning of “Boko Haram”, later claimed by a Nigerian jihadist group.
标题《索科托的从前》中带有童话色彩的叙述手法也常常影响文本的呈现。为了提升靛蓝布料的销量，津纳里预先构思了一个“古老”的传说。后来，她与纳菲萨在集市广场举办了一场19世纪末的诗歌朗诵会，津纳里诵读的《古兰经》诗句被纳菲萨更具大众风格的准说唱表演所超越。
The fabular note in the title Once Upon A Time In Sokoto also often inflects the text. Anticipating modern advertising, Zinari adlibs an “ancient” legend to raise sales of her indigo cloth. Later, she and Nafisa conduct a late-19th-century poetry slam in a market square, the former’s Koranic verse trumped by the latter’s more populist quasi-rap.
埃勒姆斯在文本中穿插了许多次要但引人入胜的细节——例如，在一种以抚摸额头为礼的文化中引入唇吻的习俗，以及米尔沃尔足球俱乐部短裤所具有的象征殖民意义的内涵——他展现出类似斯托帕德或弗雷那样的创作热情，将复杂主题以令人愉悦的方式浓缩呈现。演员们既能驾驭悲剧也能演绎喜剧，导演罗伊·亚历山大·韦斯则带来了标志性的优雅与节奏感：一场家庭对话在数秒之内便过渡到葬礼场景。
Scattering incidental but engaging data – the introduction of the lip kiss to a forehead-rubbing culture, the colonial significance of Millwall FC shorts – Ellams shows a Stoppardian or Fraynian relish in enjoyably compressing complex topics. His cast adept at tragedy and comedy, director Roy Alexander Weise brings characteristic grace and pace, a domestic conversation transitioning within seconds to a funeral.