Rare revival of The Swamp Dwellers

Nigerian Nobel literature prize-winner Wole Soyinka's forgotten play The Swamp Dwellers receives its first UK performances since 1975 at Sheffield's Utopia Theatre later thid month (June 29-July 11).

Utopia artistic director Mojisola Kareem (Crown of Blood, Death and The King’s Horseman) says the 1958 work is one of Soyinka’s "most quietly powerful plays”, but isn't as well known as Death and the King’s Horseman and The Lion and the Jewel.

Set in the Niger delta in the late 1950s, it presents an ageing couple struggling to survive in a hut raised above the swamp. Long resigned to the disappearance of one twin son, Awuchike, who moved to the city 10 years before and has cut all ties, and the move of his brother Igwezu likewise a few months ago, they are unsettled at Igwezu's unexpected return. Carrying the weight of disappointment and difficult truths, his arrival disturbs the fragile rhythms of home, raises and

long-buried tensions and unthinking subservience to

authority figures.

Theo Ogundipe as Kadiye in Utopia Theatre's revival of Wole Soyinka's 'The Swamp Dwellers'

Performed in the round at Utopia's Sheffield city centre home, only 50 tickets are available for each of 14 performances of the one act, 70-minute production.

The eight-strong cast features Jude Akuwudike (National Theatre, RSC); Urielle Klein-Mekongo (Yvette, Black Power Desk); Theo Ogundipe (RSC, Old Vic, Royal Exchange); Obi Maduegbuna (The Order of Things, Iwaju, Checkout), drummer Mr Culture and Joshua Roberts-Mensah (Dem Times, DRUM, Liberation) alongside local community-cast member Omobola Akanbi.

Mojisola Kareem said: "On the surface The Swamp Dwellers appears deceptively simple, but it asks profound questions about what happens to communities when the world around them begins to shift.

"For me, that is why the play feels so urgent now. Soyinka wrote it when he was 24, and he is now 91. What strikes me is how little has changed. Almost everything he was writing about is still happening, somewhere in the world. Young people still leave home believing the city will solve everything, only to find disappointment and disillusionment. Communities are still being fractured by poverty, environmental damage and lack of opportunity. People are still being exploited by false spiritual and political leaders. Land continues to be damaged by powerful interests while those with the least power carry the consequences."

More info and tickets here