'If you not give elephant proper burial he'll haunt you forever.'They call him Mlima, the mountain – a magnificent elephant slaughtered by poachers for his tusks. Beginning in a game park in Kenya, we follow the trajectory of the tusks through the international ivory-trade market, while Mlima's spirit is close behind, marking all those complicit in his barbaric death.Lynn Nottage's play Mlima's Tale is a thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, rage-inducing portrait of humankind's capacity for corruption and greed, and our continued destruction of the natural world. It was first produced at The Public Theater, New York City, in 2018, and received its British premiere at Kiln Theatre, London, in 2023, directed by Miranda Cromwell.
Lynn Nottage has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama – for Ruined and Sweat. Her other plays include Intimate Apparel; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and Clyde’s.
'A beautiful, endlessly echoing portrait of a murder and its afterlife. Ms. Nottage shaped this story with such theatrical inventiveness and discipline that it never feels sensational… A finely wrought fusion of elements'