Theatre in Review: The Swamp Dwellers (Theatre for a New Audience) If nothing else, The Swamp Dwellers is one of the best-designed productions in town just now. Everyone talks about "immersive" theatre, which usually involves tearing up seats and installing multiple video screens, but the new production at Theatre for a New Audience uses the classic tools of theatre design to transport us to an entirely unfamiliar place. The play is set in the Niger Delta, an area beset alternately by droughts and floods; as it begins, the waters are receding, leaving in question the fate of acres of previously arable land. Scenic designer Jason Ardizzone-West has supplied a skeletal house on a raised deck made of rough-hewn wood. The floor underneath is black and glistening, suggesting the swamp-like conditions that still prevail. Seth Reiser's lighting relies on two banks of twenty ellipsoidal units each to create a compelling day-into-night structure. As darkness falls, a set of lanterns is illuminated to haunting effect. (The sight of actors entering from upstage, emerging out of the darkness, is equally compelling.) Qween Jean's costumes, which reflect life in this backwater circa the late 1950s, are strikingly colorful; they also reveal much about the social role played by each character. Rena Anakwe's sound design calls up rainstorms, pesky flies, and drums among other effects. A series of simple, stark gestures make an alien world come alive. While we're at it, let's note that the cast is impeccable, including Leon Addison Brown and Jenny Jules as a bickering married couple; Ato Blankson-Wood as their son, returning from the city with bitter news to report; Joshua Echebiri as the blind beggar who shows up on a mysterious mission; and Chike Okonkwo as a not entirely trustworthy Yoruba priest. Awoye Timpo's direction has blended the work of all these creative participants into a strikingly unified whole. The Swamp Dwellers is by Wole Soyinka, a distinguished Nobel laureate and the first African to win the prize. (His extensive list of works includes novels, poems, and essays.) He has also been an exemplary man of conscience, standing up more than once against authoritarian governments, at one point spending twenty-two months in prison for actively trying to prevent a civil war. This careful, thoughtful handling of the work by a globally famous writer makes it doubly depressing that The Swamp Dwellers is the most dramatically inert theatre piece I have seen in several seasons. The seventy-minute play is sixty minutes of exposition and ten minutes of action. The characters express their worries repeatedly and at great length. The dialogue is heavy with portentous meanings. Blankson-Wood's character's fate is entirely tied up with that of an absent brother, about whom we learn little or nothing. Once the action climaxes in a sudden angry gesture, the play is over. I am at a loss to understand the reason for this production, in part because I have so little knowledge of Soyinka's work, which is rarely done here. The Negro Ensemble Company staged one of his dramas in 1968, but I have only seen Death and the King's Horseman, staged in 1987 at Lincoln Center Theater. It was an extremely dull evening and a critical disaster, although much of the blame was assigned to Soyinka's direction. Left unanswered is the question of why TFANA chose a play that would seem to have little to say to audiences in 2025. As a folk drama, it is largely static. It deals in commonplace notions about the corruptions of city life. It is top-heavy with discussion about events and characters who remain offstage. The people onstage are rendered with little shading or dimension; they often feel like vehicles for exposition. The play's conflicts feel entirely remote, although I suppose the floods that shape the characters' lives might resonate with audiences concerned about climate change. Still, this is a remarkably uninvolving experience. Reportedly, the great playwright Adrienne Kennedy brought The Swamp Dwellers to the attention of Jeffrey Horowitz, TFANA's artistic director. Interestingly, Soyinka recently told the Times that he had forgotten about it, having written in 1958. (It is rarely revived.) In his review of Death and the King's Horseman, Times theatre critic Frank Rich cited Soyinka's A Play of Giants as a superior work. Are we getting off on the wrong foot with a great writer who should be better known? Is The Swamp Dwellers a youthful work past its sell-by date? Or is Soyinka best enjoyed through his prose? Based on this production, it's impossible to say. --David Barbour 
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