Mugabe, My Dad & Me at Brixton House | Review

Tonderai Munyevu’s Mugabe, My Dad and Me is a touching coming-of-age story that speaks strongly to the African diasporic experience but also illuminates – with humour, rage and forgiveness – universal themes of longing and acceptance. Munyevu demonstrates impressive skill as a writer and performer by being able to start a show, charmingly, with an anecdote about desperately wanting to punch someone in the face for their causal disdain but, of course, controlling himself; and then coming full circle to the end of a much more epic tale that concludes with his forgiving his father for not managing the same restraint which led to disastrous consequences for him and his family. Reconciling the frailties and traumas of the humans we want to love with the great betrayals of former colonial powers and once revered freedom fighters is no easy feat. However, Munyevu manages – with the harmonic assistance of Millicent Chapanda, who plays a traditional Zimbabwean instrument, the mbira, and sings adding texture, mood and female presence – to do just that.

Perhaps because it is a very personal account – filled with relatable and simple moments: the first sight of snow, a first kiss, losing oneself in disco music in Soho – that when confrontation with the ghost of Robert Mugabe for bloodshed and devastation arrives, we see this as more of a rapprochement with one’s own shattered dreams than a confrontation with a dictator. Munyevu rather remarkably manages to contextualise the UK’s breach of the Lancaster House Agreement, the argument for land reform and the bias of the western press without bitterness but instead with curiosity and poetry. Of course, the degradation and indignities of colonialism and neo-colonialism are not ignored or excused in his text. But because the centre of this story is about a boy growing to be a man and eventually coming to terms with what sort of man his father – who suffered a miserable downfall and death – was and why, the experience is uplifting and hopeful as well as thought-provoking. Often it is so difficult to confront the outrages of colonialism without becoming stuck in fury. Through Tonderai Munyevu’s gifted storytelling and director John R Wilkinson’s staging – featuring a wonderful set by Nicolai Hart-Hansen – Mugabe, My Dad and Me takes us with wit, wonder and intellect to the human heart of the unanswerable question: ‘where are you from?’.

I highly recommend you check it out.

Review by Mary Beer

April, 1980. The British colony of Rhodesia becomes the independent nation of Zimbabwe. A born free, Tonderai Munyevu is part of the hopeful next generation from a country with a new leader, Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe, My Dad & Me charts the rise and fall of one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century through the personal story of Tonderai’s family and his relationship with his father.

Mugabe, My Dad & Me
24 February-1 April
Mugabe, My Dad & Me charts the rise and fall of one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century through the personal story of Tonderai’s family and his relationship with his father.
https://brixtonhouse.co.uk/