A musical about the life and times of Nelson Mandela sounds a risky proposition; in the past, musicals about politicians have met with mixed success. Stephen Sondheim’s hit Assassins dramatised the life of the men and women who attempted to kill US presidents, but his Anyone Can Whistle, a satire about a corrupt mayor, was an early flop. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice made a world-beating hit of Evita, about the life of Eva Perón, but 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a show about racism and the White House by the distinguished team of Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner, lasted seven performances on Broadway.
Undaunted, South African songwriting brothers Shaun and Greg Dean Borowsky have been developing Mandela the musical for seven years. The result, with a book by Laiona Michelle (who wrote Little Girl Blue about Nina Simone) and additional music by Bongi Duma, opens at London’s Young Vic this month, starring Michael Luwoye, who played Hamilton – another hit show about politics – on Broadway.
In the rehearsal room, its American director, Schele Williams, who lives New York, seems remarkably calm – and absolutely convinced that telling Mandela’s story through a musical is a serious and credible undertaking. “When I met Shaun and Greg, I could see the passion just oozing from them. They had such a clear reason for wanting to tell the story – and it wasn’t to do with a big commercial idea.
“These are two white South Africans who would have grown up with a very different life and understanding of their country and their people had it not been for Nelson Mandela. They wanted to tell that story of humanity. Those are the best stories to do in musicals because we get to see inside the soul in ways that are elevated because of the music. Music is the thing that connects us most.”
When Williams first got involved in 2018, the show contained dialogue, but it is now entirely sung through. “We did a concert version at the Lincoln Center in New York and realised that there was a level of gravitas that exists when Mandela sang. In the spoken scenes, it felt as if that dropped, not because of the actors, but because we all have an impression of what he sounds like. The way to make Mandela navigate the world on stage in a believable way was to change the way we hear him.”
The musical begins in 1960 at the time of the Sharpeville massacre, when 249 unarmed South Africans protesting against the country’s pass laws were killed or injured by police. It ends in 1990, when Mandela was released from imprisonment and continued the long walk to freedom that culminated in the dismantling of apartheid and his election as the first Black president of a free South Africa.
By shining a light on a less familiar part of the Mandela story, Williams hopes to deepen our understanding of his role in the struggle to end apartheid. “When people think of him, they think about the statesman, the man who was always wise and always knew what to say. What we discover is a young man who changed his ideology on how to fight – and the consequence of that was 27 years in jail. We examine the personal sacrifices that he made. He wasn’t able to be a father or a husband.
“There aren’t a lot of people who I know that would say, ‘I have to save my people, my country. That means I cannot raise my children or bury my son.’ There are not a lot of people in this world who are willing to die for their principles and for the freedom of their people.
“All I’ve ever wanted to do is to tell stories that no one else wanted to tell,” continues Williams, who is a founding member of Black Theatre United, an organisation devoted to protecting “Black people, Black theatre and Black lives” in communities across the US. To bring this one to life, she has assembled a team of British, American and white and Black South African collaborators, a rehearsal room vision of Mandela’s rainbow nation.
For some, the story comes very close to home. Gregory Maqoma, the renowned choreographer, grew up in Soweto and his childhood memories are full of the sights and sounds of apartheid, of soldiers standing in his school checking only the approved curriculum was taught to the Black children, of burning tyres and burning buildings. “It is upsetting to revisit it in a way,” he says. “But I take all of the trauma and allow it to manifest in the work.”
For Maqoma, creating a physical language that represents the way in which the people of South Africa became a part of the struggle, forging their own revolution around Mandela and his comrades, felt “hugely daunting”. “You are dealing with the story of an icon. But many times, when we see someone as a political icon, we forget that they are still human, that they experience love and pain just as much as we do.”
Some people in South Africa today feel that Mandela’s legacy is less substantial than they hoped, that economic inequality leaves too much of the Black population in poverty. But for Maqoma his significance is clear. “My mother feels love for Mandela, my father was part of the African National Congress [Mandela’s party] and that love and affection goes to me too,” he says. “If it wasn’t for people like Nelson Mandela there was a huge chance that our country would have gone up in flames.”
The musical has the backing of the Mandela family and specifically of his granddaughter Nandi Mandela and his great grandson Luvuyo Madasa. Both are descendants from Mandela’s first marriage to Evelyn Mase. “Nandi Mandela is the mother of the show,” says Williams. “Nothing has been off limits for us and she has been incredibly supportive of the way we are telling the story. She has also been very generous in saying that Mandela wasn’t the movement: his comrades were also important.”
One area to navigate is the character of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a heroine during the early years of her husband’s imprisonment when she was herself imprisoned, beaten and held in solitary confinement, but who ran her own reign of terror in Soweto in the late 80s and was subsequently found accountable for “gross violations of human rights” by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“I am here to join the dots, and understand how she got from A to B,” says Scottish actor Danielle Fiamanya of the role. “It is important for me to be able to portray the story and show her journey from the beginning; things have a start before they have an end and we need to tell people how she suffered and endured and what a warrior she was. It’s an unfathomable life.”
Fiamanya has been impressed by the way that the team has come together to create a show that is inspired by real lives, but also has the communicative qualities of art. “The piece is bigger than all of us and it has required us to band together from day one to execute something authentic.”
Maqoma agrees. “Telling the story with the utmost honesty and sincerity,” he says,“that for me was key to this project.”
What does he hope audiences will take from the show? “I think we’ve lost so much humanity. It’s easy for decisions to be taken on the basis of economics and we’ve forgotten what makes people wake up every day. I just want people to walk away with a sense that we are still human, we need each other, we can hold hands together and we can triumph together. That’s what I hope for.”
As for Williams, she is thrilled that the piece has ended up with its premiere in London, a city that played its own part in the anti-apartheid struggle. “It should be here,” she says. “There are more South African expats here than anywhere else. And when I stand outside South Africa House, I remember all the footage I’ve seen of those protests and the massive rallies that the British people held [protesting against the white South African regime].
“The British people were incredible. The government was the last to get on board. It was the people; they started sanctioning products on their own. For the people who stood protesting outside South Africa House day after day to come to see this story, it would be an honour.”
Mandela is at the Young Vic, London SE1, from 29 November-4 February and streamed worldwide via Best Seat In Your House from 19-23 January
