
Also featured are sophomore Maryse Pearce as Sadiku, Baroka’s head wife junior Alpa Banker as The Favorite Hal Bates, Jr. as Laxunle, Revocat Murayi as Baroka and Erin Vaughn as Sidi. The cast of 17 is led by seniors Jimmy Ganasin Brooks Jr. Artist-in-Residence as well as founder and producing director of the St. The Lion and the Jewel is directed by Ron Himes, the Henry E. What follows is an engaging mix of deception, manipulation and misunderstanding, as Sidi attempts to chart her own destiny somewhere between the old and the new. Yet when Sidi’s portrait appears in a magazine, her newfound celebrity turns the men’s competition inside out. Lakunle is arrogant and condescending, belittling traditional ways - from tribal dress to “bride-prices” - while the “Old Lion” Baroka simply wishes Sidi to join his already large collection of wives and concubines.

Both men attempt to woo Sidi, a local beauty known as “The Jewel,” though both also leave much to be desired as suitors. Set in Ilujinle, a Yoruba tribal village in Western Nigeria, The Lion and the Jewel explores the rivalry between Lakunle, a progressive but self-important Westernized schoolteacher, and Baroka, the domineering village chief. Tickets are $15 - $9 for students, senior citizens and Washington University faculty and staff - and are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and through all MetroTix outlets.įor more information, call (314) 935-6543 or visit Sunday, April 27.Įdison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

Friday and Saturday, April 25 and 26 and at 2 p.m. Performances continue the following weekend at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 18 and 19 and at 2 p.m. Performances take place in Edison Theatre at 8 p.m. Seniors Erin Vaughn and Revocat Murayi as Sidi and Baroka in Wole Soyinka’s *The Lion and the Jewel,* directed by Ron Himes. In April, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present this deceptively light-hearted carnival of dance and song as its spring mainstage production. Such conflicts lie at the heart of The Lion and the Jewel, a sly and subversive comedy by Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka.

Men versus women, modern versus traditional, culture versus colonization.
