What distinguishes Crown of Blood within the broader field of Shakespearean reimaginings is its conceptual autonomy. The production does not seek legitimacy through proximity to Shakespeare; rather, it positions Shakespeare as one interlocutor among many. The tragic form is thus reconfigured through Yorùbá metaphysics, Yorùbá history, Yorùbá political intrigues, mythologies and conundrums – all producing a dramaturgy in which the spiritual and political are inseparable
OLADIPO Agboluaje’s Crown of Blood, directed by Mojisola Kareem for Utopia Theatre, enters the British theatrical landscape as a significant intervention in the ongoing dialogue between Shakespearean tragedy and African performance epistemologies. Rather than offering a straightforward adaptation of Macbeth, the production constructs a dramaturgical encounter in which Yorùbá cosmology, political history and ritual aesthetics reshape the tragic form from within. The result is a work that neither imitates nor rejects Shakespeare, but instead reorients the tragic gaze toward a different moral and metaphysical horizon.
The production’s enduring metaphorical and physical image — a throne suspended mid‑air, held by long red drapes that evoke arteries, lineage and sacrifice — functions as a visual thesis statement. It signals a world in which power is unstable, spiritually mediated and historically burdened. The throne’s elevation destabilises the familiar iconography of kingship, suggesting that authority is not grounded but contingent, held in tension between the living and the ancestral. This image establishes the production’s central concern: the negotiation between political ambition and cosmological accountability.
Kareem’s direction is marked by a deliberate resistance to the linearity and psychological naturalism that often dominate British stagings of tragedy. Instead, she foregrounds ritual temporality, allowing silence, gesture and atmosphere to shape the dramatic rhythm. The Crucible’s wide stage becomes a liminal space — part shrine, part political chamber — where the boundaries between the earthly and the spiritual remain permeable. This approach aligns the production with Yorùbá performance traditions in which the metaphysical is not an abstraction but an active participant in human affairs.
The scenography reinforces this cosmological framing. The carved columns that flank the stage operate as a council of ancestral witnesses, their shadows extending across the performance space like a visual chorus. The textures — woven, earthen, tactile — situate the action within a Yorùbá aesthetic logic that privileges continuity with the past. The suspended throne, meanwhile, becomes a dramaturgical device: a barometer of moral tension, responding almost imperceptibly to the unfolding political and spiritual crises.
A crucial dimension of the production’s cosmological architecture is the role of Èsù, who replaces Shakespeare’s three witches not as a functional analogue but as a fundamentally different epistemic force. In Yorùbá ontology, Èsù is the mediator of aṣẹ, the custodian of the crossroads, and the interpreter of divine communication. In Crown of Blood, he becomes the dramaturgical hinge through which the Ifa oracle’s pronouncements are channelled, refracted and, at times, deliberately obscured.
Rather than offering the linear prophetic clarity familiar from Macbeth, Èsù presents Aderemi and Oyebisi with three viable directions — physical, metaphysical and spiritual — each laden with its own moral and historical consequences. Èsù’s interventions complicate the notion of tragic inevitability: destiny is not imposed but navigated, negotiated and misread. Moreover, the production reframes Oyebisi’s trajectory not as the vaulting ambition of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth but as a response shaped by her own history of enslavement in Oyo, with Èsù mediating her desire for justice rather than simple power. In this configuration, Èsù is neither tempter nor trickster in the reductive Western sense; he is the moderator of cosmic balance, the facilitator of choice, and the agent who ensures that human action remains entangled with spiritual accountability.
Deyemi Okanlawon’s Aderemi offers a compelling embodiment of tragic subjectivity under pressure. His early composure gives way to a gradual constriction of physical and vocal space, suggesting a man increasingly shaped — and ultimately undone — by forces he cannot fully comprehend. His trajectory is less a descent into madness than a tightening of cosmological entanglement.
Kehinde Bankole’s Oyebisi provides the production’s most intellectually rigorous performance. Rather than reproducing the familiar figure of the manipulative consort, she constructs a character whose strategic clarity emerges from her reading of history, lineage and consequence. Her stillness carries interpretive weight; she listens with the acuity of someone attuned to both political and spiritual frequencies. Her interventions in Aderemi’s decision‑making are framed not as coercion but as insight.
The ensemble contributes significantly to the production’s texture. The oracle’s attendants move with ritual precision, their choreography echoing divinatory rhythms. The warriors’ scenes introduce a grounded physicality that contrasts with the spiritual volatility above them. The carved ancestors, though inanimate, exert a persistent dramaturgical pressure, shaping the audience’s perception of accountability and consequence.
The production’s most notable strength lies in its refusal to collapse Yorùbá political history into Shakespearean analogy. Agboluaje’s script insists on the specificity of nineteenth‑century Yorùbá political structures, where kingship was negotiated through complex relationships between lineage, prophecy and communal authority. This insistence occasionally produces moments of expository density, particularly in the mid‑sections, yet it ultimately affirms the play’s intellectual integrity.
What distinguishes Crown of Blood within the broader field of Shakespearean reimaginings is its conceptual autonomy. The production does not seek legitimacy through proximity to Shakespeare; rather, it positions Shakespeare as one interlocutor among many. The tragic form is thus reconfigured through Yorùbá metaphysics, Yorùbá history, Yorùbá political intrigues, mythologies and conundrums – all producing a dramaturgy in which the spiritual and political are inseparable.
The production’s final tableau — Oyebisi defiantly claiming the throne with Aderemi’s lifeless body before her — crystallises the play’s tragic architecture. The image is arresting: she stands adorned in ceremonial regalia, her posture regal yet unyielding, framed by red drapery that echoes both blood and destiny. The throne, once suspended and elusive, is now physically occupied — but not by the man the oracle named, and not yet the vengeful woman. This moment reframes the tragic arc: Oyebisi’s ascent is not the fulfilment of ambition but the enactment of justice, mediated through Èsù’s complex cosmological logic. Her history of enslavement in Oyo reconfigures the stakes of power; her claim is not a usurpation but a reckoning.
Èsù’s presence lingers in the ambiguity of the scene — the crossroads he governs now fully manifest in the physical, metaphysical and spiritual layers of the stage. The audience is left not with resolution but with reverberation: a throne about to be claimed, a body fallen, a destiny rewritten. In this final gesture, Crown of Blood affirms its tragic vision — one in which history, ritual and resistance converge, and where the gods do not simply speak, but watch.
Experiencing the production in the Crucible on the opening night, beneath the suspended throne and the carved ancestral gaze, the theatre feels charged with a rare kind of attentiveness. The audience leans forward; the actors lean into the weight of the cosmology they inhabit; the set seems to breathe with them. The performance becomes not merely a retelling but a reclamation — a negotiation between British stagecraft and Yorùbá world‑making, between historical memory and prophetic imagination. It is a work that lingers, not because it echoes Shakespeare, but because it articulates a tragic vision rooted in a different, equally rigorous intellectual tradition.
Oladipo Agboluaje is a Nigerian‑British playwright whose work explores the intersections of African political histories, diasporic identities and contemporary British society. A leading figure in Black British playwriting since the early 2000s, his plays — including The Estate, Iya‑Ile (The First Wife), New Nigerians and Immune — are noted for their sharp political insight, satirical edge and engagement with Yorùbá cultural frameworks. He has written extensively for the stage, radio and education, and has held writer‑in‑residence positions with a number of UK theatres. Agboluaje’s dramaturgy frequently interrogates the legacies of colonialism and the complexities of postcolonial governance, situating him as a key voice in contemporary intercultural theatre.
Mojisola Kareem, PhD, is a director, actor and the Artistic Director of Utopia Theatre, a Sheffield‑based company dedicated to amplifying African theatre and diasporic narratives within the UK cultural landscape. Her work foregrounds African performance traditions, ritual aesthetics and community engagement, often blending classical texts with contemporary African perspectives. Kareem has directed a wide range of productions across the UK, championing intercultural dialogue and the visibility of African stories on British stages. Under her leadership, Utopia Theatre has become a significant platform for African artists, developing new writing, training initiatives and international collaborations that expand the possibilities of African‑centred performance in the UK. Last year, she directed the third production of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman in the UK.
Writer: Oladipo Agboluaje; Director: Mojisola Kareem (Utopia Theatre)
Set and Costume Designer: Kevin Jenkins; Lighting Designer: Alexandra Stafford.
Lead cast: Deyemi Okanlawon (Aderemi), Kehinde Bankole (Oyebisi), Patrice Naiambana (Iwalagba/Èsù), Jude Akuwudike (Opaleye/Kundi), Kayefi Osha (Iya Agan/Iyanifa), alongside a strong ensemble of Nigeria and UK‑based performers.
