Heartstrings’ humour shines as Sitawa recites memorable poems
Bruno (Timothy Ndisi) with his dad (Chipukeezy Muasya), Martina ((Bernice Nthenya) with her dad (Johnstone Chege) as Martha (Triza Kabwe) the maid looks on. Photo/MARGARETTA WA GACHERU
By Margaretta wa Gacheru
Posted
Thursday, May 15
2014 at
19:14
Heartstrings Kenya may not be experts in titling their plays. For instance, there isn’t one bridegroom in Bridegrooms for Sale, their latest show that ran last weekend at Alliance Francaise, Nairobi.
But they are experts in eliciting laughs, although
a few observers felt some laughs were ‘‘cheap shots’’ stereotyping
local communities with ‘‘tribal’’ slurs.
Nonetheless, the show’s stand-up comic cum
narrator Wilfred Olwenya was hilarious, coming out in between each act
with a wickedly funny interlude, convincing us he’s a genius of physical
comedy and rapid-fire joke-telling as well.
The story proper was unusual for Heartstrings as
it came originally from the UK and then got indigenised by director
Sammy Mwangi and his cast.
All about a successful female novelist and single mother of three, Dorothy (Aimee Ongeso) is shamelessly independent.
However, when two of her three children announce
they want to marry into the same Warida family, she finally admits to
her children (Bernice Nthengya as Martina, Nick Kwach as Walter and
Timothy Ndisi as Bruno) she is not a widow, has never been married and
all three have different fathers.
Vowing to marry now so as not to shame her
children in Mrs Warida’s eyes, she calls all three fathers (Lawrence
Murage, Johnstone Chege and Vincent Chipukeezy) to ask them to decide
among themselves who she should wed.
Chaos ensue since Dorothy is still lovely and all three men want to marry her.
Ultimately, she decides to go back to being ‘‘a widow’’ since it’s easier than dealing with these wildly jealous men.
As I expect Heartstrings to re-stage this show, I
won’t be a spoiler by telling how it ends except to say there’s a
hilarious punch-line once Mrs Warida (Maria Wambui) arrives on the
scene.
This was one of the tamest Heartstrings shows that
I’ve ever seen but it still worked for me and Alliance audiences who
have come to expect slightly more raucous performances from the cast.
I especially liked the character of Dorothy, whose
independent agency was surprisingly expressive of any number of Kenyan
women I know, women who adore their children but adore their freedom
just as much if not a little more.
Meanwhile, next door at Goethe Institute, I watched Sitawa Nambalie’s Silence is a Woman
for the third time and vowed to watch this ingenious production the
next time it’s staged since all three performances were very different,
each one fresh and new.
It’s true all three shows are based on Sitawa’s
poetry which is performed powerfully by a cast of three and accompanied
by two musicians; Willy Rama on drums and Giriama flute, and Boas Otieno
on the orutu, the single-string Luo harp. But that’s just the basics.
The biggest difference in shows came after the
first performance at the Michael Joseph Centre when Alice Karunditu came
on board to direct and she made sweeping changes both in the structure
and the ambience of the script.
Most importantly, she brought the musicians from the periphery
onto centre stage at pivotal moments when they became as integral to the
story as were the actors, Sitawa, Aleya Kassam and Melvin Alusa.
Alice also enlivened the stage with lyrical
movement and rousing dance that engaged all five performing artistes
whose moods shifted from joy to melancholy to downright tragedy and back
to levity depending on which one of Sitawa’s poems the cast was
performing.
And while there were several memorable poems that
were constants in every show, there were subtle shifts in the sequencing
of the poetry; plus there were new poems added and others removed as
new insights struck the director and poet on ways to make the stanzas
flow more like a theatrical script with a clear storyline.
Cutting edge
The other big change in the show was the departure
of Mumbi Kaigwa (who had another production), and the arrival of
Kassam, a relative new-comer to the stage but an actress who wow-ed
audiences when she first appeared in Vagina Monologues late last year. She had the same effect in Silence.
Ultimately, it was Sitawa and her powerful poems
that gave the show its cutting edge. The most moving for me was the
title poem, based on the tragic true story of the silencing of the
brilliant female freedom fighter Chelagat Mutai.
Her story made me weep every time I heard it,
Sitawa’s genius being her ability to transcribe the emotional content of
Chelagat’s sad story into heart-rending poetry.
In the final analysis, it’s not the silence but
the voice of the woman that I most admire about this show, the voice
heard most poignantly when Sitawa wrote and staged Silence is Broken, another one of my favourites.
Lastly, the Kikuyu comedy Nyama Ndoge is being staged by Johari Five at Kenya National Theatre and runs through the weekend.
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