When the criminal is innocent and cops crooks

Liquid Arts’ latest production, Le Criminal, staged at Kenya Cultural Centre last weekend, is essentially about trust and truth, or rather about trust versus deceit and truth versus duplicity.

But at the outset of the play, one can’t figure out anything. All we hear is high-pitched, high-speed shouting between Felista (Liz Njeri) and her business partner Kababa (Caleb Kuria).

What we finally figure out is that she ‘wants out’ and he says she’s not going anywhere since she’s already in ‘it’ up to her ears. But what is ‘it’? Why did she get in ‘it’ in the first place? And why does she want out?

When the ‘ten million’ get mentioned, we get a clearer view. Apparently, they are involved in embezzling government funds. Kababa is a senior government employee, so he’s the one who had access to the cash.

How Felista is involved is unclear except that she’s connected with the man they made the fall-guy for their crime.

Much of what we surmise in Le Criminal is not clearly stated. Some of the issues are never plainly spelt out. What we do understand early on, is that Felista is fearful that this man named Drew is supposed to be released soon from prison after 10 years. But if he gets out, he is bound to figure out who framed him and got him put away for a decade.

Apparently, she and Kababa prefer he stay behind bars for life. Once we figure out who Drew is, namely her husband and the father of her child, we realise how nasty and self-serving this girl is.

Physically attractive, she clearly knows how to manipulate men. But the fact that she wants her husband to remain jailed for life is stunning.

Still, we are never sure why she wants out of her deal with Kababa. Is it because she believes she already has her cut of the cash, and doesn’t need him anymore?

Is it because she wants to plead innocent if and when her husband gets out of jail? Or is it simply because she wants to skip town so she won’t get nabbed if the truth is ever known?

There’s too much speculation in Le Criminal, especially as it doesn’t stop there. How is the prison warden Jim (Daniel Ribiro) involved with Kababa? He apparently works for him, but why should that entitle him to brutally beat the ‘criminal’ Drew.

His beatings are excessive, to the point where Jim nearly strangles Drew to death, causing Drew to speak the same words as the late George Floyd, “I can’t breathe.’ That reference is intentional, and police brutality is under scrutiny in the play. But again, we don’t know the rationale for Jim’s conduct.

Then there’s the Inspector (Shirley Mumia) who appears out of nowhere and sings along with Drew. That’s apparently a hint at the kind of relationship she has with Drew. As it turns out, she is the truth-seeker who looked into Drew’s case, followed the money trail, and found it transferred into Kababa’s bank account.

But then, once Kababa informs her he’s cheated her as well as Drew and taken all the stolen cash for himself, she apparently ‘repents’ and goes to tell Drew about their son. She promises to look for the missing file which we now know has information in it which can clear his name.

Did she have a change of heart because Kababa left her penniless? Or did she really see the error of her ways and want to finally get her husband out of jail?

It’s the Inspector who finally arrests Kababa and Jim, and throws them into the jail cell that’s there on the Ukumbi Mdogo stage. She also has the power to pull Drew out of the cell and make him a ‘free man’.

By the end of the play, Felista has apparently come clear. Drew has told her he’d never forgive the people who put him in prison, so she knows there’s not much hope for forgiveness once he finds out what she did. But she tells him anyway.

That gets her thrown behind bars with the other two criminals. It also leaves Drew devastated, and we too are still slightly mystified by Liquid’s Le Criminal.