Ernest Wamboye and Checkmate Mido at Storymoja stage. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU
It’s a pleasure to see the passion of theatre producers expressed in their repositioning of plays to bring them back to the public after their first run.
It just happened with the Nyef Nyef Storytellers last weekend when they restaged their original adaptation and dramatisation of Al Kags’ gripping collection of true stories shared with him by survivors from the tumultuous Fifties in Kenya, entitled Living Memories.
It’s also about to happen tomorrow at The Carnivore Grounds when Kaaga Girls High School will reproduce their National Award-Winning play, The Last Hostage from 3pm.
For those of us who couldn’t catch much (or any) of this year’s Schools and Colleges Drama Festival, this is an opportunity that theatre-lovers shouldn’t miss since some of the most original, relevant and entertaining plays are produced for that annual festival. I suspect The Last Hostage is all that and more.
The other theatre come-back is the West African play, Edufa by Efua Sutherland and being re-staged by Gilb’Art Productions from November 3rd to 4th at Kenya National Theatre.
Gilbert Lukalia has re-assembled his star-studded cast including Peter Kawa as Edufa, Veronica Waceke as his love-sick wife Ampoma, Ian Mbugua playing Edufa’s sagacious father Kankam and Maina Olwenya as Edufa’s jovial friend Senchi among others.
Edufa’s skillfully directed by Caroline Odongo, while the lively choreography has been done by Neema Bagamuhunde.
Sutherland re-set the Greek tragedy Alcestus by Euripides in a Ghanaian cultural context. Like Alcestus Edufa’s got a problem with death and consults a diviner to find out how to obtain immortality. The diviner’s prescription defines the drama that subsequently unfolds.
The show’s a tragedy for sure, despite the levity injected by Maina Olwenya’s jovial Senchi and the agile troupe of dancers. The tale of Edufa runs deep and there are definitely lessons to be learned.
The first one’s embodied in the producer Lukalia who’s determined to renew a high standard of performance in Kenyan theatre today.
One reason we loved seeing Living Memories restaged in Storymoja’s brand new performance space is because we knew Nyef Nyef’s cast had been short-staffed the week before due to unavoidable circumstances.
The show had to ‘go on’ anyway, but Nyef Nyef founder Muthoni Garland was still committed to perfecting the performance of Living Memories.
There was little need for Checkmate Mido to ‘improve’ his performance since he’s a masterful drummer, singer and storyteller.
Nonetheless, the Living Memories script last Friday night was slightly adapted to re-shape Mido into a father of his two darling daughters, played by Agnes Wangithi and Muthoni herself.
It was a wise shift of interest as it gave greater continuity to the women’s memories. Both had harrowing experiences during those dreaded days although their experiences were very different.
Both actresses gave as powerful experiences as before; both were survivors although Muthoni’s character seemed far less traumatised than Agnes’ who’d be incarcerated for years in British concentration camps during Operation Anvil and the Emergency.
Both women had been sexually abused, but at least Sefu hadn’t lived in the camps. Either way both had endured excruciating forms of servitude but had survived.
What effectively prepared the audience was that the sisters’ painful tales were the preceding well-told stories of the rickshaw driver (Ernest Wamboye) and the German ‘discovery’ of Kenya (as told by Ciru Ivy), which the white man pronounced ‘Keenya’.
Finally, the one production last week that was new (or at least hadn’t been staged in recent times) was Heartstrings’ Grass is Greener put on last weekend at Alliance Francaise.
All about a couple committed to divorcing one another for reasons they spit out bitterly at one another, the two are trapped in the same house (presumably due to financial constraints).
So bitter is their battle, they feel compelled to draw a line between them which neither one is meant to cross.
But then when his flirtatious gold digger girlfriend (Bernice Nthenya) shows up and hots up the house, Tabitha (Anna Njeri Kamau) gets the house help (Cyprian Osoro…) to find her a candidate to stand in as her equally ‘hot lover’ (Victor..).
Staging a psychological sort of ‘domestic violence’ in Grass is Greener, Heartstrings veers away from political innuendo this time round, but they still illustrate real-life issues facing intimate relationship.
