Category: Life – The Midweek Magazine

One of the hallmarks of drama and theatre is its ability to effect changes in the society if used properly. Many know this, but fewer people understand the workings of Satiric Theatre than Prof Wole Soyinka.

The Thespian Family Theatre (TFT), with dreams of ‘building community, a stage at a time’ decided to stage two of his most famous plays, The Trials of Brother Jero, and The Lion and the Jewel as part of activities commemorating playwrights birthday.

Having watched The Lion and the Jewel as performed by the aforementioned troupe, it struck the writer’s fancy to watch the second performance on the menu, The Trials of Brother Jero.

The play itself, as written by Soyinka, chronicles an event in the unscrupulous life of a hardened and flagitious false prophet, Brother Jero. Having learnt and mastered the trade of con artistry from his master, the Old Prophet, he turns him from master to victim by evilly unseating the old cheat and stations himself at his spot on the local beach converting it to his lair. There he ensnares anyone his sprightly wit recommends as a victim ripe enough for his malignancies. This rebellious misdeed which has brought the old prophet to ruin prompts a rather savage string of curses from the Old Prophet. Apparently, he owes some money to a trader he bought his priestly garb from, and she, being a proper nag and committed she-devil, has come up with a most audacious way to collect her money from her debtor; viz. by stationing herself outside the prophet’s house and laying a siege to his movements.

Soon enough, Amope, the trader, gets distracted when a fishwife in every sense of the word passes by, and she tries to bargain with her; an ill-timed venture which soon turns to a haggle, and the ensuing repartee provides the cunningly watchful ‘Jero the much-needed opportunity to hightail it out of his house and flee pell-mell to the beach with a rich dosage of contumely following him expressly from the unceasing tongue of the trader.

Meanwhile, he has been restraining (in what seemed to him business strategy) Chume, his customer/client cum worshipper, from beating his wife who offends him daily. Upon making the shocking discovery that his unmanageable creditor is in fact Chume’s wife, he tells the gullible Chume the Lord has given the go-ahead for him to deal his wife a proper beating. By and by, when Chume is about to trash his wife, he discovers Jero’s fraud, and wroth, goes to end Jero and expose him for what he truly is – mere crook. Just when it seems like Jero will be hoisted by his own petard, lo and behold, the gilt-edged charlatan proves himself a master rogue by turning the tables and having the latest addition to his congregation, a political aspirant, ‘settle’ Chume.

Under Olufemi Oke’s direction, the play went great guns as there were minimal faults and the performers fired on all guns in a manner which nearly made the writer forget that the play is in fact, meant to be a satire. Perhaps, the first thing praiseworthy about the play as performed by TFT was the venue for the play. Terra Kulture, Lagos, proved a suitable venue for staging plays – better suited than Freedom Park at least. Next was the stage itself. The set was constructed with utmost industry and resourcefulness on the part of Mr Uwem Ikerika.

Also, the first scene was very energetic and it featured such gumptious displays as Brother Jero, played by the baritone Mr Toju Ejoh, sonorously render his famous opening lines (‘I am a prophet…’) without boring the spirit out of anyone, and then the Old Prophet…. played by Mr Ikechukwu Asonye, that old prophet did know how to curse. Trembling frenetically, he, in style, cursed Brother Jero to be brought to black perdition at the hands of the ‘daughters of discord’, and despite the modulatory antics he had to perform with his voice, maintained audibility.

The next scene was also another all hands on deck scenario as no performer was desirous of being outdone. Chume, played by Mr Peter Adesanya, came careening on stage on a bicycle, with Amope, (Miss Ronke Odunewu) perched precariously on the bike. After being repeatedly chided and scolded by Amope, a tongue-lashed Chume huffishly left the scene with a hangdog look. Miss Odunewu was apparently talented with audibility as she reeled off her lines audibly and managed to make it synchronise with her acting, and she melodiously infused Yoruba language with English in a rich blend. This scene also featured the dexterous Awolowo Bunmi who played the aforementioned fishwife, and was well grounded in the shrewishness that characterises market women who sell fish. She railed and spat out deadly invectives convincingly when provoked. One would even be left wondering if there was no prior enmity between Ms Odunewu and Ms Awolowo.

The director also controlled the congregational scenes properly with mimic dances which were very easy to understand as each individual dance hinted at one societal ill or the other ranging from lechery to hypocrisy. Even the slapstick was in order with nothing that could provoke injury perceptible.

Notwithstanding this laudable showing by the TFT, a few observations seemed to flaw the production. First, the writer noted that the opening glee was virtually the same with that of The Lion and the Jewel. This hinted at monotony, for although they were performed by the same troupe, they were directed by two different thespians, and seeing as they were two different plays, they should have been treated as such. The only thing that seemed different about the glee was the observation that the performers were clad in the flowing gowns peculiar to white garment churches and the dramatic entrance of the dancers cum drummers – they danced onto the stage in the typical melodramatic manner used to depict fake spirituality.

Also, the lighting/technical man displayed a lot of artistry with his lights but seemed to have one major problem – he kept switching the lights on while the stagehands were engaged in the business of moving props on and off stage. Besides this, he was perfect, changing light colours in the necessary cues with remarkable attentiveness.

At the last performance, the writer complained about the gracelessness of the cameraman. Halfway through this performance, the cameraman of The Lion and the Jewel seemed cherubic compared to the officious individual who took it upon himself to constitute a complete impediment to the writer’s vision. In fact, he seemed so dedicated to this office that he planted himself firmly in a thoroughly unschooled fashion in the direct angle that was the writer’s viewpoint. While posing as a Nephilim with his camera, the writer implored with him on two occasions to step aside, and on both occasions, he did step aside, only to come blundering back to impeding visions.

It would therefore end all, but not be all to note that whenever thespians – performers and technicians alike – commit themselves to a performance in truth and in spirit, with high morale, the result is usually similar to what the TFT displayed today; ‘leg-breaking theatre’.

• Ade-Adeleye is of the Department of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, (OAU) Ile-Ife.

There has been much fuss in the media regarding the credibility of Okey Ndibe’s prose style. His debut novel, ‘Arrows of Rain,’ shares a close title with Chinua Achebe’s 1964 novel, ‘Arrow of God.’ His deployment of the nuances in the ethical values of the Igbo people in his latest novel ‘Foreign Gods, Inc,’ is reminiscent of the author of the most read African novel in English. But the crucial point is what marks the difference between imitation and inspiration. While imitation means impersonation in a slavish form, inspiration means influence with a profound sense of ingenuity. ‘Chinua Achebe has taught me much about life and literature,’ Mr. Ndibe says loud and clear in the Acknowledgements to the novel.

‘Foreign Gods, Inc.’ is an overwhelming triumph, a bold testament to the invincible power of imagination and also to the ruinous obsession of its protagonist, Ike with life on high speed and the ‘here and now.’ The obsession here is the effigy of Ngene, his townsfolk god of war with a savage reputation for brutality in Southeastern Nigeria. The sacred totem pits this New York graduate but cab driver against several odds including Mark Gruels, owner of a posh art gallery in the city. As the novel opens, Ike walks into Gruels’s gallery – the ‘Foreign Gods, Inc.’ of the title – to talk him into buying the effigy. He has, before now, gleaned from a magazine sent him by a friend that Gruels’s gallery offers incredible prices for statues, carvings and curios from all around the globe. By putting Gruels under persistent pressure to offer a price for the statue which still sits at the corner of a shrine in his village, Utonki, we are let in on the unabating desperation of this character to seek a better life. But Gruels outwits him, refusing to make a deal until he sees the statue.

From here, the rising tension picks its way to the past, through Manhattan in the jumble of ‘fast-moving pedestrians, its traffic, its…skyscrapers’ before infiltrating Ike’s one bedroom flat, where Bernita holds sway. Ike’s life is falling apart already owing in part to his awkward lifestyle and also to his four-year-old marriage to his ‘beloved’ Bernita, humorously called Queen B because of her bee-like irascibility. Slowly, the heat intensifies around him, having discovered Bernita has been sleeping around with men. In the ensuing divorce battle, he is fleeced almost to the skin by this nympho, whose real lust could not be pinned down between sex and money. Ike, in his own past encounters, had dated women of different stripes and shades and would have obtained his green card much earlier and averted t a bad marriage, had he been patient with his college girlfriend.

Emboldened by the friend that sent him the magazine to steal the effigy, stirred by emails from his family in Nigeria to come home, he seems on his way to a better life. He borrows $1,000 dollars from another buddy together with the remains of his savings and obtains a credit card that charges an outrageous 28.9% interest rate.

Ike arrives his native Nigeria to meet communalism supplanted by individualism, lively village squares give way to ivory towers, common love to pernicious greed, heightening Salman Rushdie’s sentiments that ‘civilisation is the sleight of hand that conceals our nature from ourselves.’ We are not left out of the mind games played by predatory preachers, especially Pastor Uka, who milks his poor congregation at will through heartless theatrics. He sets Ike’s mother against his uncle, the chief priest of Ngene and attempts to inveigle him to part with a whopping $50, 000 for a church project. It is in this hostility that the novel catches its resonance. Mr. Ndibe takes the liberty of language to reveal the rich nuances of his style – its hard-earned sensuality imbued with the sight, taste, smell, voice and prickle of things. There is no disputing his power as a master of evocative prose, considering how he handles trope so assuringly, sometimes to gripping, sometimes to witty effects.

There are moments, however, in the story, which come across more as obvious footdragging than a needful attempt at building up the pressure of expectancy. The amusing scene where kids, watching Michael Jordan’s past exploits at the NBA, fantasize about what they would do if they were as rich as he is overdone, for instance.

At the village, the effigy is highly valued by its devotees though hardly is any of them aware that the war prowess of their gods belongs to the past. The emergency of British imperialism banned communal clashes: Ngene’s forte through which it inflicted peerless devastation on neighbouring clans. Left in the hand of a sloppy carver, Ngene’s body is not depicted in an attitude of warfare but rather in a relaxed and idle pose, no more than a lifeless piece of artifact kept in a shrine. The spirit, however, inhabits a river on the outskirts of the village. ‘When he outlawed wars and disarmed warriors, the white man stripped Ngene of its offices. Had the deity been a mere puppy, instead of the former scourge of enemy cavalries, the white man might have banished it altogether.’