The making of Moo
By Nigel Dennis
Orange Tree Theatre Richmond
Directed by Sam Water
11th Nov – 12th Dec
This was yet another excellent production from Sam Waters. He is the supreme master at using the Orange Tree space and knows exactly what works in the space and how to use his actors to enhance his plays. The Making of Moo is a very interesting piece and courted much controversy when it first opened in 1957, things have changed since and I am sure that no where near the same amount of fuss will be made over this revival. That is not to dismiss the excellent performances from Philip York as Frederick Compton, Amanda Royal as Elizabeth Compton, Duncan Wisbey as Donald Blake and Ben Onwukwe as William. They are more than ably backed up by Christopher Staines and James Woolley and supported by Stuart Burgess, Jermaine Dominique and Joel Kangudi. There was a nice cohesion between all members of the cast and the play is a very nice, tight piece, empathising the point that the author was trying to make, or rather the point that I think the author was trying to make.
Frederick Compton has spent several years in a colony building a new dam. There has been a great celebration but then a man has been murdered and to his horror, Compton discovers that the new dam has killed Agar, the local river god. Determined to make amends, Compton invents a new god and sets out to write the rules that the new god would want the local people to follow. His wife, Elizabeth, contributes with a name, Moo and adds the revelations of Moo and Donald Blake wants to add the musical liturgy to make this new god attractive. And so Moo becomes an actuality in a wonderful display of fervent charisma. Wonderful except that William, the person that this deity was invented for stays calm, aloof and detached and unaffected by this display, a great disappointment as it is pointed out later in the play. The fuss about the play is its treatment of organised religion and how much of it is mumbo jumbo. The programme adds to that with some pieces by some eminent atheist thinkers. However, Christianity is not a book of rules laid down for us to follow, it is not just pretty pieces of music or dances, it is not an arrogance and blind faith of being right.
This is the point that I believe that Nigel Dennis was trying to make. The British colony system was indeed very arrogant and we treated our colonies as not only children, but babies, incapable of looking after themselves, so much so that we decided what they needed, in this play a dam, and a set of rules for them to follow. Most of our past colonies very quickly threw out the constitutions that we left them, they revised, drastically the various systems of education and law that we considered so vital for them to have. They correctly treated us colonisers with utmost respect and complete distain, for we were so arrogant in our approach to them and 1957 was right in the middle of us giving up our African colonies and the argument in 1957 was all about how could they exist without us? We have no way of knowing whether they would have done better or worse with or without us. History is not an experiment, we have no way of repeating that experience, we only have the good fortune that our one time colonies still wish to be associated with us at all.
Reviewed by Evan Rule
