“Spirited, wrenching, and often sublime…[The ensemble] is part of what makes the show so powerful…A reminder of what a mighty force empathy in the theater can be.” (New York Times)

Isango Ensemble is a South African theater company that draws its artists from the townships surrounding Cape Town. The company reimagines classics from the Western theater canon while finding new context for the stories within a South African township setting, thereby creating inventive work relevant to the heritage of the nation and a “joyful fusion of two cultures.” (Boston Globe) For their UMS debut, they present three performances of The Magic Flute, which features Mozart’s score transcribed for an orchestra of marimbas, and two of Jonny Steinberg’s A Man of Good Hope, the riveting true story of a Somali refugee with a painful past, miraculous good luck, and a brilliant head for business, told through roof-lifting songs and dance accompanied on marimbas.