“It takes a village to… save the world!”

I have been aware of the pioneering work of Mandala Theatre Company for years but for one reason or another had never managed to catch their shows until last night, when I had the privilege of being in the gorgeously intimate North Wall auditorium to see their latest production, Seed Guardians. Mandala are an Oxford-based, internationally renowned company that centre marginalised voices, led by ethnically diverse creatives to tell stories that promote social justice. In our current world brimming with multifaceted and interlinked injustices, to do all that while remaining entertaining and inspiring is a tall order, but Seed Guardians showed that this company is well up to the task.

The play weaves together the experiences of three UK food bank volunteers: Zahra (Mya Fraser), who is shaped by memories of helping her grandmother on her farm in Zimbabwe; Daniel (Onthium Klarcks), a former trainee lawyer who now relies on Deliveroo shifts for his income after seeking asylum from Sudan; and Raf (Luis Ribeiro), a young man who has recently been evicted from his flat after his factory hours were cut. Their shared goal of building food security in their community becomes heightened in the face of a new threat when Zara discovers, in the opening scene, that her beloved Gogo, Grandma Seed, (Nicole-Rose Munhawa) has been poisoned, with the evidence pointing to the Toxic Cartel that she spent her adult life campaigning against. With support from Daniel and Raf, Zara picks up the baton of her Gogo’s life’s work, battling destructive corporate greed and its many consequences (from the global to the highly personal) while dealing with her grief and its impact on her sense of identity.

This summary gives just a glimpse of the huge scope of this new production, which also managed to cover the symmetry between the extractive exploitation by landlords in the UK and that of pesticide and GMO-pushing corporations involved in neocolonialism in Africa, the cynical way politicians have pitted vulnerable groups against each other, and the horrors of gender-based violence and war, all without turning the characters into ciphers.

Seed Guardians demonstrates the complex intermeshing of these big themes through a range of impressive techniques. The small but mighty cast of 4 conjures up a multitude of characters who are all real and relatable, even just from a couple of lines of dialogue. The chemistry between Munhawa, Fraser, Ribeiro and Klarcks, not just in their main roles but as food bank clients, younger versions of each other, police officers and anonymous suits, brought the script to life, as did the great choreography, which included a wonderfully dynamic chase scene and a surprise roller disco!

The versatility of the performers, whose range encompassed not just acting but dance, poetry and painting, was complemented by the versatility of the set and the props, which for the majority of the show were minimalistic and industrial but by the end had transformed into a fittingly pastoral, colourful collage. Even the use of lighting had a tangible effect on the dialogue, especially the red lights beaming from a sinister statue whenever greenwashing businessmen were broadcast.

For a production filled with serious messages, there was a lot of joy and lightness seamlessly threaded throughout, with dancing, jokes and elements of a will-they-won’t-they rom com enhancing the audience’s connections to the story and emphasising messages of hope, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.

Seed Guardians is at the North Wall until Saturday and then touring across Britain - don’t miss the opportunity to be carried along by the energy and passion of everyone involved in this production, which constitutes a love letter to theatre, to community and to our shared home, Mother Earth.