About
Death and the King's Horseman:
Death and the King's Horseman plays at National Theatre Olivier
South Bank, London, SE1 9PX
- Map
Seating chart & directions
Nigeria, 1943. The King is dead, and tonight his Horseman must escort him to the Ancestors. As Elesin Oba dances through the closing marketplace, flirting with the women, pursued by his praise-singer and an entourage of drummers, he promises to honour the ancient Yoruba custom of ritual suicide and so accompany his ruler on the final journey. But a life so rich is hard to leave, and this is a British colony where such customs are not tolerated, no matter how sacred.
Set against the conflict of indigenous and invader, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's extraordinary play uses Elesin's transition from the living to the dead to examine the essence of corruption and the power of the human will.
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