Africa’s first Nobel laureate’s “quietly powerful” play has not been performed in the UK since 1975. The Swamp Dwellers, directed by Dr Mojisola Kareem, is at Utopia Theatre 29 June-11 July 2026.
The Niger Delta, the late 1950s. The land is disappearing. A community stands on the edge.
As relentless rain threatens an already failing harvest, an ageing couple struggles to survive in a hut raised above the swamp. Long resigned to the disappearance of one twin son who vanished to the city years before, they are unsettled when his brother suddenly returns without warning.
Carrying the weight of disappointment and difficult truths, his arrival disturbs the fragile rhythms of home. When a stranger appears at the door, long buried tensions begin to surface.
Utopia artistic director Dr Mojisola Kareem (Crown of Blood, Death and The King’s Horseman) has thoughtfully resurrected Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers, bringing it back to the UK stage for the first time in over half a century. She believes the 1958 work to be one of Soyinka’s most “quietly powerful plays”, which “sits in the shadows” of the better-known Death and the King’s Horseman and The Lion and the Jewel.
It is a quiet story of survival in a landscape pushed beyond its limits. And in a world facing a climate emergency, Kareem says this 70-year-old tale by Nobel Prize-winning writer and activist Soyinka hits harder than ever.
The eight-strong cast features Jude Akuwudike (National Theatre, RSC), Urielle Klein-Mekongo (Yvette, Black Power Desk), Theo Ogundike (RSC, Old Vic, Royal Exchange), Odi Maduegbuna (The Order of Things, Iwaju, Checkout), drummer Mr Culture and Joshua Roberts-Mensah (Dem Times, DRUM, Liberation) alongside two local community cast member Omobola Akanbi.
Performed up close and in the round at Utopia Theatre’s Sheffield city centre home, just 50 tickets are available for each of 14 performances. The one act play will be performed without an interval and lasts around 70 minutes.
The Swamp Dwellers was last staged in 1975 at African Caribbean arts centre Keskidee in Islington, north London. It was directed by Nigerian-born playwright, actor and director Yemi Ajibade, the centre’s then artistic director.
Dr Kareem said: “On the surface The Swamp Dwellers appears deceptively simple, but underneath, it asks profound questions about what happens to communities when the world around them begins to shift. For me, that is why the play feels so urgent now. Soyinka wrote this play when he was just 24-years-old. He is now 91. What strikes me is how little has changed. Almost everything he was writing about is still happening somewhere in the world today. Young people still leave home believing the city will solve everything, only to find disappointment and disillusionment. Communities are still being fractured by poverty, environmental damage and lack of opportunity. People are still being exploited by false spiritual and political leaders. Land continues to be damaged by powerful interests while those with the least power carry the consequences. The play feels incredibly contemporary because it touches on issues we are grappling with globally: migration and the search for a better life, climate anxiety, inequality, economic desperation, environmental collapse, fractured communities and the tension between tradition and modernity.”
Related links
- Crown of Blood – review
- First Look at Utopia Theatre’s Crown of Blood at Sheffield Theatres
- Oladipo Agboluaje – interview
- Kehinde Bankole (Oyebisi) and Deyemi Okanlawon (Aderemi) – interviews
- Death and The King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka – review
- MEET THE FULL CAST OF DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN
- Mojiso la Kareem – interview
