Resilient hero on epic journey of hope

Songs and dance, steeped in South African traditions, help audiences on the epic journey that is A Man of Good Hope. Photo/Keith Pattison.

Lowdown
What: A Man of Good Hope
Where & when: ASB Waterfront Theatre, March 14 – 18

In 2010 - before the conflicts the Arab Spring brought, before refugee bodies washed up on Mediterranean beaches and long before an American reality TV star became US President and demanded to "build a wall" – two men sat in a car in a shanty town in South Africa and talked about a child forced to flee a "failed state".

One was Jonny Steinberg, a white, well-educated academic, writer and journalist; the other was Asad Abdullahi, the Somalian child who had grown into a man with only a fleeting memory of the day, in 1991, when rebel troops shot dead his mother in front of him at their Mogadishu home. He thinks he was 8.

The shot was akin to a starter pistol on a race to stay alive that would see Abdullahi travel from Somalia to Kenya, to Ethiopia and, eventually, Tin Can Town (Blikkiesdorp in South Africa's Cape Town) and, somehow, live to share a story which involves all the worst aspects of modern society - war, human trafficking, poverty and xenophobia – and the best of an individual - hope, resilience, kindness, determination and humour.

What would Steinberg and Abdullahi have said had they known a refugee crisis - the likes of which the world had not seen before - was coming and that the response of some nations, supposedly more educated, rational, tolerant and humane since the last crisis, would be to close borders or build walls?

And what would they have thought had they known their contribution to offering a different point of view would be a memoir, A Man of Good Hope, followed by a musical – usually that most sunny of theatre genres – that would be performed around the world?

Not only that, the production, with a 22-strong cast, would be praised for "bursting with life", being "exhilarating and inspired" and featuring "marvellous songs and breathtaking acting" – an "extraordinary magical piece of theatre" that all politicians should see.

Ask Steinberg whether he thinks there is something triumphant in what he, Abdullahi - and later London's Young Vic Theatre and South Africa's Isango Ensemble – created and there's almost a hint of sharpness in his otherwise warm and well-modulated tone.

"I think that's the wrong word in a case like this; it's a story about prejudice and what happens in cases of stark inequality and drawing attention to this is not triumphant," he says. "It might be searing and powerful in getting people to think about the world in different ways and that might be considered something of a triumph but, no, not triumphant."

Actors from South Africa's Isango Ensemble bring to life Asad Abdullahi's story of determination and hope. Photo/Keith Pattison.

For nearly a year, he and Abdullahi would meet and sit in a car outside the latter's shack-like shop, talking about how an 8-year-old boy grows to become a man after being swept up in a wartime migration in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

But as The Spectator reviewer Michaela Wrong wrote, the resulting 2015 book was far from a "misery memoir". Wrong described it as sitting on a higher level of storytelling; a true, relevant and modern memoir about the hope and determination to live a meaningful life.

Steinberg had previously told stories about others who live on the margins in the new South Africa - refugees, those living with Aids and those who fall outside new laws – to provide a more nuanced picture of life in the country after the end of apartheid and the beginnings of a new democracy.

He wanted Abdullahi's humanity and dignity to lift from the pages and, later, in the play which was made in 2016 after the then-artistic director of London's Young Vic Theatre Company, South African-born David Lan, read A Man of Good Hope.

Lan called Steinberg almost immediately to ask how he would feel if the book were made into a production, saying he saw clear parallels between Abdullahi's experiences and the refugee crisis rippling out from the Middle East and North Africa.

Pleased, but intrigued, Steinberg agreed then wondered exactly how it would come together. There were obvious challenges: the story spans two decades, crosses six countries and talks about a bleak chapter in South Africa's history when violence against Somalian and Congolese refugees exploded in a tense purpose-built town – 1600 one-room structures laid out in 16 identical square blocks – where the city's displaced and dispossessed mixed.

"It didn't exactly seem like the subject for a musical."

Different actors play A Man of Good Hope's resilient hero Asad Abdullahi at different stages on his epic journey. Photo/Keith Pattison.

But he got a front-row seat as the Young Vic joined forces with Isango Ensemble and began picking apart the narrative, facing up to some of the less unpleasant truths it revealed about South Africa and finding ways to tell the story.

There were workshops, that Steinberg got to watch and comment on; preview performances in South Africa and then the opening season in London where Steinberg sat nervously in the audience awaiting the results.

"I saw it when the public did," he says. "It was a great privilege but also very humbling. I thought the production was wonderful and that they'd done an incredible job – and I know how hard it was, having seen its evolution.

"I was most pleased that it got handed to a South African company because it's a story about their lives and they did many things with it. They used it as a hard critique about what's happened to South Africa post-apartheid but also this difficult story with levity through music and dance and that conjured up the spirit of hope and joy that runs through it. It was very powerful."

And urgent, Steinberg later adds, given what's happening around the world since those almost more innocent days when he sat with Abdullahi in the car in Blikkiesdorp.

"I hope that audiences can have an imaginative journey into the life of a person who, before the show, would have been very 'other', very 'inscrutable' and get into a place where they can imagine that, had they been born in other circumstances, they could have been that person."

And, yes, says Steinberg – he does hope politicians come to see it wherever it plays.

• Not to spoil the production, we've chosen not to say whether Abdullahi is still alive and, if so, where he lives or whether he's seen the musical.