Fresh version of ‘A man like you’ returns to Braeburn stage

Save space on your calendar in the coming week to go see Silvia Cassini’s award-winning play, A Man Like You at Braeburn Theatre, reopening for two nights only, next Tuesday and Wednesday. After that, the show is off on a whirlwind tour of southern Africa, first to Harare, then to Cape Town.

It’s a “must see” production even if you watched it when it premiered on Braeburn Theatre’s smaller stage in March last year. Much has changed since it was nominated seven times at the Sanaa Theatre Awards 2016 and won twice, once for Best Actor (after Maina Olywenya played the hot-headed Somali kidnapper-extremist with ferocity and seething intellect), and Best Tragedy (for an ingenious tale well-told and brilliantly crafted by Cassini).

After that, the show went to New York City where it had a stunning Off Broadway run for three weeks at the Idta Theatre on East 4th Street. Sadly, the original cast could not perform due to US legal constraints, but Silvia went to see how Yudalka Heyer had directed her “baby”. “It was a bit different from the way we’d staged it, but I picked a few ideas which we’ve injected into the play’s “third incarnation”, Silvia told Business Daily.

The other big change in this fresh version of A Man Like You is the casting. Silvia had been in a quandary having lost two of her actors. Tom Walsh who’d played Patrick North, the British diplomat who’d been kidnapped by Somali zealots whose motives were not simply random money or revenge, had already left Kenya.

Meanwhile, Maina Olywenya who had played Abdi’s part so persuasively, had several challenges, not the least of which was bureaucratic, so he sadly had to bow out.

Fortunately, Silvia managed to work wonders and get two outstanding Zimbabwean actors who do much more than merely “fill in” for their predecessors. Both Kevin Hanssen who’ll play Patrick North and Mike Kudakwashe playing Abdi, are professionals who bring a fresh perspective to the play.

What’s also fortunate is that Silvia’s still got Davina Leonard (who was amazing in one-woman production of “Every Brilliant Thing’) playing Elizabeth, Patrick’s long-suffering wife. Silvia (who again directs the show) also still has Amwoma Mboga as Hassan, Abdi’s angry Somali colleague and Patrick’s armed guard.

It is in the parts of these two characters that we can see how the playwright has subtly changed several significant features of the play. One is she’s fleshed out Hassan’s character, making him more militant and hostile not only towards North but even towards Abdi who surprisingly seems more comfortable culturally with the Briton than with his fellow Somali.

The other subtle shift in the play is Elizabeth’s musings which seem more closely interlinked with those of her spouse. Silvia achieves this nuanced merging of minds, which apparently transcends time and space, with a sensitivity that also allows us to feel more of the depth of their enduring love. In all, this third rendering of A Man Like You seems to have a more holistic feeling even as the story itself operates on so many levels: both politically and economically as well as personally and psychologically. This third time round, one may see that Cassini’s play has not only matured theatrically. Its story has also been sharpened, enabling us to get a clearer perspective on the complexity of the Somali situation and that of militant extremism generally.

Meanwhile, Festival of Creative Arts’ production of Whose Wives Are They Anyway has been postponed from this weekend due to ‘extenuating circumstance.’ The show will now open at the Kenya National Theatre on May 19.