{"id":6799,"date":"2016-10-04T12:21:02","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T11:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799"},"modified":"2016-10-04T12:32:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T11:32:59","slug":"the-emperor-home-reviewed-by-peter-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799","title":{"rendered":"The Emperor<\/em>, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Emperor<\/em>, by Ryszard Kapu\u015bci\u0144ski, adapted by Colin Teevan and directed by Walter Meierjohann; September 29, 2016.<\/h5>\n

 
\nYou don\u2019t need to know much about Haile Selassie to enjoy Kathryn Hunter\u2019s performances in The Emperor<\/em>, a one-hour, almost one-woman show in which she dons many hats (and shoulder stripes, and walking sticks, and epaulettes, and fly wisks) to paint a picture of life in the King\u2019s court, refracted through the eyes of his employees. <\/p>\n

Adapted by Colin Teevan from Ryszard Kapuscinski\u2019s 1978 book of the same name, Hunter is variously the emperor\u2019s time-keeper, the minister of information, the emperor\u2019s pillow bearer and, perhaps most particularly, the emperor\u2019s valet de chambre, an elderly man who traverses the stage with a walking stick and regales us with the tale of his own downfall, in a conscious echo of the man whom he so obviously holds in such high esteem, alongside many others.<\/p>\n

To begin with, Hunter flits from character to character at speed and we have a sense of the court in the accumulation of stray details \u2013 the placing of cushions, the wiping up of urine. Gradually the narrative settles and Heili Selassie himself begins to emerge: a character we never actually see onstage, formed from the rags and patches of the people he rules over most intimately, and of those who moved about his orbit each day. And as he emerges \u2013 perhaps as we hear the story of the poor, and how they were given envelopes of money, only to discover they were empty after they had left the palace \u2013 we see that The Emperor<\/em> is a story of power, and how power corrupts. <\/p>\n

If you are of a certain age, if you grew up in the 70s as I did, you\u2019ll be aware of the terrible famine that swept Ethiopia in that decade \u2013 and possibly even Jonathan Dimbleby\u2019s 1973 documentary The Unknown Famine. The reaction to Dimbleby\u2019s documentary is dramatised here: Selassie\u2019s Minister for Information \u2013 who becomes one of the most significant characters as the action progresses \u2013 holds a press conference that comes to centre on the death of his own son, a student at the Selassie university who took part in protests against the government and was gunned down, an action that saw father having to apologise for son.<\/p>\n

The play undoubtedly charts the fall of Selassie, and yet it manages to chill and amuse in equal measure. A long white curtain is drawn across the stage as we accompany Selassie and his servant as they engage with the international scene \u2013 prompting Hunter to break the fourth wall in a way that makes a typical theatre audience deeply uncomfortable \u2013 and it is (eventually) fun, provoking some of the bigger laughs of the evening. As the people of the country starve, Selassie chooses development projects like hospitals, airports and bridges over human life, because hospitals, airports and bridges will still be there long after the starving people and even the king himself have gone. You can\u2019t help but consider the current situation in Britain. \u201cFuck Brexit,\u201d Hunter yells at one point. She is preaching to the converted at HOME. <\/p>\n

Hunter deserves an extraordinary amount of credit for her almost one-woman show (her performance has been called the best of 2016 \u2013 and it must certainly be up there) but she has solid support from Temesgen Zeleke, who punctuates the production with live music and plaintive song. Zeleke\u2019s music \u2013 and the ease with which it allows Hunter to switch a hat for an epaulette, to stand, to sit, or to flirt coquettishly with the audience \u2013 would be enough to praise him. But he also performs alongside Hunter, mostly peripherally it has to be said, and his turn as the Minister of Information\u2019s son is sharp with comedy and rebuke.<\/p>\n

Hunter\u2019s performance and Zeleke\u2019s music alone is enough to warrant a high recommendation, but director Walter Meierjohann is, we sense, someone who wanted the total production to hit home as powerfully as possible; and every aspect The Emperor<\/em> does hit home, and hard. The lighting (see Hunter bestriding a stage that could just as easily be a boxing rink); the sound (the distant hum of electronic noise, people in the street, gunfire); the cinematic devices (a typescript that trails each major part of the play, the nuanced use of the Dimbleby documentary which we watch together with \u201cSelassie,\u201d or at least we are told that he is watching), all add up to make this more than the simple sum of its accomplished parts. <\/p>\n

So: you should see The Emperor<\/em> for Hunter\u2019s many performances. Yes. But know that these performances are not your sole reason for watching. Hunter is terrific but so is Zeleke, and so is Teevans, and so is Meierjohann, and so are the dozen or so people who have all come together to make this genuinely impressive production.
\n <\/p>\n

At HOME<\/a>, October 4-8. Box office: 0161 200 1500.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Emperor, by Ryszard Kapu\u015bci\u0144ski, adapted by Colin Teevan and directed by Walter Meierjohann; September 29, 2016.   You don\u2019t need to know much about Haile Selassie to enjoy Kathryn Hunter\u2019s performances in The Emperor, a one-hour, almost one-woman show in which she dons many hats (and shoulder stripes, and walking sticks, and epaulettes, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[283,17],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Emperor, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Emperor, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Emperor, by Ryszard Kapu\u015bci\u0144ski, adapted by Colin Teevan and directed by Walter Meierjohann; September 29, 2016.   You don\u2019t need to know much about Haile Selassie to enjoy Kathryn Hunter\u2019s performances in The Emperor, a one-hour, almost one-woman show in which she dons many hats (and shoulder stripes, and walking sticks, and epaulettes, and […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-10-04T11:21:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-10-04T11:32:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799\",\"name\":\"The Emperor, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-10-04T11:21:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-10-04T11:32:59+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=6799#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Emperor, HOME, reviewed by Peter Wild\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. 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