Kani and Sher provide meat for the mind

John Kani and Antony Sher

It’s South Africa, 25 years after the death of apartheid and the birth of the Rainbow Nation. Successful classical actor Jack Morris is struggling to learn his lines for the eponymous role in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Interrupted by the doorbell, he is horrified to discover that the carer/nurse that he was expecting from an agency is actually Lunga Kunene, an elderly black man and senior nursing sister.

But why does he need a carer/nurse? Because he has stage four liver cancer. Can he live long enough to perform Lear? Can he stop seeing Kunene as all black people?

Kunene and the King is written by South African acting legend John Kani (the first black Othello on stage win South Africa in 1987, and also T’Chaka in Marvel’s Black Panther), who also plays Kunene in this RSC production, which has been seen in Stratford upon Avon and Cape Town before arriving in London’s West End.

Now, just to be clear, in 1985, after appearing in the anti-apartheid play Sizwe Bansi is Dead, which Kani co-wrote with Athol Fugard, he received a phone call saying that his father wanted to see him. On the way there, Kani was surrounded by police, who beat him and left him for dead. His left eye was lost in the incident and he now wears a prosthetic.

Kani is more than qualified to give lessons in what apartheid meant – and what its legacy means. He's lived it. And he is scathing, for instance, of Jacob Zuma’s corrupt governance.

At approximately 96 minutes – with no interval – this is a short work, but while it has plenty of laughs, it’s also full of enough intensity for double that time.

In some ways, it feels simplistic: yes, yes, yes – we (the white West) know about this! Don’t labour the point!

But any simplicity is superficial. There’s real meat here – on a number of levels. The clashes of culture, ‘othering’ – and not one by any one group alone; the universality of Shakespeare; the fear of mortality …

This is a deceptive work by Kani – a work that is utterly apt not just for South Africa, but (like the Bard’s works) for everywhere and perhaps particularly in these fraught times.

The work relies on the strength of the actors playing the roles in this two-hander. At first, you think that Kani seems physically constrained –  until you understand that the character is all buckled-up self-restraint: he’s seen the worst behaviour of both white and black South Africans in the fight to set his country free and subsequently, and is fighting against his own anger to be a good human being.

His has been a life spent constantly struggling within himself to be humane and to bolt down the rage within against what he has seen and experienced.

It is a superb performance.

Opposite Kani is his South African compatriot, Antony Sher, as Morris. And Sher also turns in a simply stunning performance as someone struggling with his place within history and against a dreadful disease. Neither of the men are flawless – but neither are evil either.

It’s on until 28 March. There are still tickets available – and I recommend it.