Award winning ‘Beach Access’ set for Samosa fete in original script

In a little more than a week at Nairobi National Museum’s Louis Leakey Auditorium, the Samosa Festival will host Kuldip Sondhi’s award winning play Beach Access, which is all about such timely topics as land grabbing at the Coast and interracial affairs.

Last staged in Mombasa as a Theatre Company production, this time round the script is being produced by the playwright together with Kwezi Multimedia Arts.

Radically re-directed by Hillary Namanjia and Mbugua Kinuthia, the play promises to more accurately reflect Sondhi’s script, which was recently published by Awaaz which also founded the Samosa fete.

A skeleton of the original cast will be there, including Muscat Moreno Sayye as Hamisi, Ashik Yusuf as Mr Seth, Awab Mohamed, Seth’s son Prem and Edward Wanyama as Dunda. Otherwise, the majority of members have been recast or added as per the original script which aired on BBC radio more than 10 years ago.

The interracial nature of the love interest between the beach boy Hamisi and middle-aged white woman Helga is clearer this time round as Vilja Pisara, a professional actress from Finland plays Helga.

Last time the show was staged, a young Kenyan actress played Helga which killed an essential feature of Sondhi’s play since his aim was to portray a social phenomenon that is as alive today at the Coast as it was when he wrote it in the late 1990s, that is, older white women linking up with African beach boys.

Speaking to Sondhi recently during a rehearsal at Mombasa’s Little Theatre Club, the Business Daily found the playwright delighted to see the changes that Hillary had made to the new production.

“The Kenyan actress performed well, but she was miscast since I specifically made Helga a white European,” he said. He also noted that Hillary had also returned Mrs Seth (Akila Raza) after she had been removed from the first show.

In rehearsal, it was apparent what the previous show had missed by removing the wife of the Asian businessman Seth, who wheeled and dealt with the local area chief (Harold Otieno) to grab the beach access road the beach boys had previously used to reach their sandy business sites.

Mrs Seth provided the emotional core of the Asian family, providing food that her husband boasts about and protection for her bookish son Prem (Awab Mohamed) who wants no part of his father’s illegal dealings.

She humanises the Asian home, providing a balance to the Africans’ scenes and ones featuring the white woman as well.

Sondhi has developed the characters and emotional content of all three groups represented and who interact at various levels at the Coast.

What’s more, the playwright takes on the stereotype of the corrupt Asian by contrasting the son to his father and the African father and daughter (Anita Kim) who both latch on fast to Seth’s proposal to grab public land.

Fortunately, the group hit pay-dirt when they found the former Finnish missionary, actress Vilja Pisara. Professionally trained, she was keen to come back to the Coast (where she had stayed for two years) from Kisii where she’d recently moved after ministering in the region more than 20 years before.

Having observed interracial relations first hand while living at Diani Beach, Vilja’s familiarity with the phenomenon means she easily conveys the emotions of the older white woman wanting either a fling or a deeper thing with a young, virile African man.

She and Muscat definitely have chemistry on their side as their relationship veritably smolders on stage, even in rehearsal.

Finally, Peter Mbugua who plays the all-important role as the beach boys’ lawyer Hassan also serves as the show’s co-director and he does an excellent job, as one will see August 31 when Beach Access comes to Nairobi.