ABSTRACT
Of first importance is the production's vexed relation to William Shakespeare. The programme for the public premiere of Umabatha at the Open Air Theatre of the University of Natal in Durban in 1972, immediately prior to its translation overseas for Peter Daubeny's 1972 World Theatre Season at the Aldwych, carries the subtitle 'a Zulu drama on the theme of Macbeth' above the cast-listing. London critics had every right to be puzzled. Several showed themselves impatient of the claim that Umabatha was anything more, or other, than a rather peculiar foreign version of Shakespeare's play. It is common cause that Umabatha was written by Welcome Msomi: every production, from 1970 on, announces the fact. The archival evidence is there in the three exercise books containing the original text in Msomi's hand which are lodged in the Umabatha Collection at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
