David Afriyie Donkor's book, Spiders of the Market: Ghanaian Trickster Performance in a Web of Neoliberalism, takes Ananse, the well-known trickster spider character of West African folklore, as a tool adapted to disrupt political propaganda in the Ghanaian theatre in the 1990s. By drawing close parallels between the development of the newly independent nation-state under J. J. Rawlings and performance productions rooted in Anansesεm storytelling, the author seeks to demonstrate “how both trickster behavior and the process of political legitimation can be understood as social performance” (2). In this way, Donkor's book provides an intriguing examination of the possibilities for critical affect enabled by performances in Ghana. Starting with a thorough explanation of twentieth-century political developments in the country, the author considers Rawlings's promotion of neoliberal ideology through foreign investment and cultural tourism before taking up Ananse as the key to interpreting performative subversion.

Donkor establishes performative potential in three case studies in Chapters 3–5, assessing the Ananse ethos (explained in Chapter 2) as an example of Judith Hamera's idea of “technique” (13) to counter government-controlled messages through indirection, doubleness, and ambivalence. The author finds such traces of the trickster spider in the examples of a solo artist gyimi comedic performance by the famous Bishop-Bob Okalla, a Keysoap Concert Party performance by the King Karo Troupe, and a kodzi storytelling performance in the town of Ekumfi-Atwia. In each of the examples, he aims to “show how the Ghanaian regime attempted to use cultural performances to actively reinvent the moral concepts of citizenship and the public good” (6–7) and how these efforts were destabilized. In the first case, Rawlings sought direct endorsement from the comedic star to foster support for his presidential election among rural audiences. The author examines the trickster technique of indirection when Okalla includes an endorsement in his regular performance. Coming from the famed performer dressed in his habitual bold costume and over-the-top makeup, the audience might question the sincerity of this endorsement. The second example illustrates the misleading efforts behind reestablishing the tradition of concert party theatre and creating a national theatre, where performances promoted corporate sponsors. Establishing Unilever Keysoap as the private benefactor of the national theatre and the concert party tradition aimed to “validate the regime's neoliberal policy directives” (121). In the King Karo troupe's play, the character of Ma Red is punished for embracing neoliberal individualist values. Like Ananse, her doubleness in being both celebrated and detested complicates the political moral that the production was intended to promote. In Donkor's last example, a young girl unwittingly interrupts a storytelling event. Storytelling performances traditionally engaged audience members who would interrupt songs and interject during narrations. In this case, however, these interruptions have all been staged to sell an “authentic” performance. When the girl walks across the stage, she reintroduces anarchic possibilities into an otherwise rehearsed performance marketed as cultural heritage tourism.

Writing from his perspective as scholar, performer, and Ghanaian native, Donkor offers a clear view of the political backdrop of the country around the turn of the millennium and a deep understanding of the famed trickster spider of Akan folklore. As a “co-performative witness” (23), he grounds his performance analyses in detailed descriptions gleaned from his observations. A potential drawback to this perspective is that the author asserts his own understanding of the experience without critically questioning it. He evaluates the examples through the powerful potential inherent in “Ananse's essential tendency to render the meanings and intentions of his words and actions ambivalent,” asserting that in each case “this spider trickster ethos [is] a perfect embodiment of that dialectic tension” (186) between the character and the performer. However, Donkor seems to read more political meaning into the performances than the performers—and, in one case, a five-year-old girl—intended. He seeks to demonstrate his thesis that these participants strategically borrow the techniques of Ananse's character, yet it is unclear to what degree the artists aim to do this and to what extent the audiences are aware of it.

As Donkor focuses on the latter half of the twentieth century, this book picks up where Catherine Cole's 2001 study of Ghanaian concert party theatre leaves off. Few other studies cover African theatre, one exception being the introductory book West African Popular Theatre, coedited by Karin Barber, John Collins, Alain Ricard, which is now twenty years old. Donkor's book, therefore, offers valuable insight into modern popular theatre as well as a comprehensive approach to the complex political and economic developments of a West African country. It is worth noting that, over time, Ananse's prominence in West African folklore has spread outward from the Akan people in the territory that is now Ghana. Missing from Donkor's discussion of the spider figure in the one nation's development is the larger context of the trickster character in performance traditions across the region and even the African diaspora. In fact, the remarkable image on the book cover of a larger-than-life masked Ananse performer represents a tradition that is never discussed in the text. That said, for the examples included, Donkor not only offers detailed accounts of the artists and the performances but also supplementary images, recordings, and video clips available online through Ethnomusicology Multimedia (https://ethnomultimedia.org). By sharing the performance experiences, rather than texts, Donkor accomplishes the challenging task of introducing rare theatre performances in a particularly compelling context for a Western readership in a global age.