Lynn Nottage’s Play About the Elephants

Lynn Nottage’s riveting new play, “Mlima’s Tale,” opens on a moonlit savanna. Deep elephant calls rumble through the theatre. At center stage, an African man (Sahr Ngaujah) begins a soliloquy. “I was taught by my grandmother to listen to the night,” he says. “Really listen . . . for the rains in the distance . . . listen to the rustling of the brush . . . for the cries of friend or foe . . . . Because how you listen can mean the difference between life and death. It’s the truth of the savanna, something we all learn at a very young age.”

The narrator, who is identified as “Mlima” (“mountain” in Swahili), soon reveals himself to be an elephant. He has been shot with a poison arrow and is being closely pursued by poachers intent on harvesting his enormous tusks. The tusks, 2.4 metres long and ninety kilos each, are worth a fortune. The poachers have been pursuing him for forty days and are closing in on their weakening quarry. Mlima’s nostalgic soliloquy is a lament for his life, which he feels ebbing away. “They are watching me always,” he says. “I hear them all around me. And I run more than I walk.”

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