‘Welcome to my first tour of the day,” says Samuel to the audience. We’re in the courtyard of a former slave castle in Ghana’s Cape Coast which housed more than three million Ghanaians between the late 17th and 19th centuries, before they were shipped across the Atlantic. But today it is a tourist destination and Samuel is our guide. He’s here to show us around, get to know us, and teach the group the history of the castle as part of the country’s “Year of Return” initiative. “I love this job,” he swears.
But this is no relaxing holiday. Samuel Takes a Break ... In Male Dungeon No 5 After a Long But Generally Successful Day of Tours (to give Rhianna Ilube’s play its full title) is a forensic cross-examination of the dark tourism industry. Ilube digs deep into colonialism’s impact on British identity and asks, poignantly, how we are supposed to preserve the horrors of the past. “We don’t like the word slave here,” says Samuel to his guests. With such a charged argument at its core, the narrative sometimes slips into polemic. And yet Ilube’s writing still makes you shake, laugh and not for one second forget the castle’s past.
