Sankofa: The Soldier’s Tale Retold is the latest and, probably, the last show from Art of Time Ensemble.  It’s a bold and successful attempt at updating Stravinsky’s iconic work.  The music is all Stravinsky but Titilope Sonuga’s libretto is new.  It preserves the basic triad of Narrator, Soldier and the Devil but moves them to WW1 Canada.  Our soldier is a Black Canadian of West African extraction who is trying to join the Canadian army, which rejects him because of his skin colour.  His faith in his heritage, symbolised by the spirit bird Sankofa, with a little help from the Devil leads to the formation of the 2nd Construction Battalion, a non-combat unit, which was the only way Black Canadians could serve.  He survives the war and returns from France to find that the same battles must be fought over (and over, and over) again.

It’s a really sharp libretto; constructed, like the original, in rhyming couplets.  Normally that would drive me nuts but this one is clever with enough half rhymes and variety of rhythm not to sound twee.  It’s all held together by a really strong performance by the stunningly dressed Ordena Stephens-Thompson as the Narrator.  Olaoluwa Fayokun combines strength and innocence and some stunning dance moves as the Soldier.  It’s a strong portrait of a young man conscious of his warrior heritage and the pain of its rejection.  Diego Matamoros, mostly in drag, is a wheedling and tricky devil.  In fact this Devil has multiple personalities and each emerges distinct but of a piece.  It’s fine acting.  The movements are precise and the relationships carefully delineated and good use is made of the vertical possibilities of the space thanks to first rate direction (Tawiah McCarthy) and choreography (Pulgas Muchochoma) backed up by evocative lighting (Kevin Lamotte).

On stage we also have seven musicians from the Glenn Gould School conducted by Andrew Burashko; all in pretty authentic looking WW1 service dress.  They cope very well indeed with the demands of this fascinating but quirky and demanding score.  It’s a weird blend of spiky atonalism, folk tunes, dance music and a nod to martial music.  I think there’s a just recognisable nod to the Tasarist national anthem in their somewhere.  The blend of stage action and music is powerful.

It’s really pretty impressive how in about an hour this show both resurrects a long buried piece of Canadian history and presents in the context of a conversation about racism that moves from the slave ships on the African shore to the present day.  Top notch theatre.

Sankofa: The Soldier’s Tale Retold runs at Harbourfront Centre until October 27th.

Photo credits: John Lauener