Two new plays about west African
upheavals in as many nights. But whereas Matt Charman’s
The Observer at the National
Theatre cannot escape its European perspective (which is partly the
point), Oladipo Agboluaje’s play here is far more specific and, if this
doesn’t itself sound too patronising, authentic.
This is a prequel to Agboluaje’s 2006 piece
The Estate, and explains much of
the landscape of that other work. The later antagonism between Chief
Adeyemi’s widow and the successful pastor who buys the family estate
has its foundations here: in the Lagos of 1989, both are servants in
the chief’s household and are engaged, but driver Pakimi has little
success in raising the money for them to set up home together, leading
maid Helen to take desperate measures. Both younger son Soji’s
naïve idealism and his taste for the music of Fela Anikulapo Kuti
are explicated here, as we see him agitating for the release of an
opposition politico. And both the chief and the first wife of the title
are shown to be at best unreliable role models, the former unable to
keep it in his trousers, the latter demonstrating old-order snobbery
and a domestic tyranny over her children and servants.
Not that this play is at all dependent on
The Estate for either understanding
or enjoyment. It is an almost Chekhovian portrait of a family and a
social stratum which fail to realise that they will be, not washed
clean away by the tide of events, but severely eroded. This is a
Nigeria in transition from its 1980s military regime to civilian rule,
but in which the generals have learnt venality from their civilian
predecessors, so that the chief has to crawl to them for building
contracts. Another similarity to Chekhov is the blend of comedy and
melancholy: there are many laughs in these two hours, but the final act
is audacious in the unmodulated extent of its disillusionment and
pessimism. Even scene changes show the range of moods in the play, with
entr’actes from a hilarious army dance routine accompanied by Kuti’s
anti-military song “Zombie” to the mob “necklacing” of a thief. Femi
Elufowoju Jr’s production for his Tiata Fahodzi company is fluid and
pacy, and Jude Akuwudike and Antonia Okonma give strong leads as the
chief and his wife.
Written for the Financial
Times.