SECULAR
STORYTELLING STAGED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted December 13, 2017)
As we head toward
Christmas, Hanukkah and the new year, theatre lovers have just seen the three
best holiday productions complete their runs on various stages in Nairobi.
Grease at
Kenya National Theatre, Ali Baba at Braeburn Theatre and The Nutcracker ballet
at both KNT and Braeburn all had memorable finale performances.
Last weekend
was also a time when Christmas music was alive, vibrant and soul-inspiring at
both The Elephant in Lavington and in churches like All Saints Cathedral.
So what
remains in the way of theatre this weekend is secular storytelling which has
nothing to do with holiday festivities. (It seems the expectation has been that
people would disappear from town by mid-month).
At Alliance
Francaise, Heartstrings won’t let you down if you are looking for loads of
laughs, although ‘Nobody is leaving’ is slightly more inane and illogical than
most Heartstrings shows.
It’s all
about a wealthy single father (Nick Ndeda) who’s on his way to work and to
banking his business’s cash when his only daughter Subsconsta (Cindy Kahuha) informs him her boyfriend Shawn is arriving
today from the UK where he’s fresh from Oxford, Harvard and his supposed business
interests in oil!
Dad is
delighted and interprets ‘boyfriend’ to mean fiancé. Thus, he drops his
previous plans and starts preparing for his girl’s wedding. Aided by his trusty
(but zany) house man (Victor Nyaata), he orders food, chairs, sofas and loads
of other items fit to impress family members, but not her friends.
He’s out of
step with millennials, it would seem. But he tries to be polite when two
strangers (Cyprian Osoro and Jane Wangari) show up. We assume they are
Subsconsta’s friends although the girl is peculiarly silent in the face of her
father’s flurry.
One cannot
tell whether Cindy is playing passive on purpose (because the story is designed
that way) or if she’s been poorly directed or if she simply cannot act. But her
passivity is peculiar. So is the fact that she doesn’t question the identity of
the two strangers since they are clearly not family relations although they
pretend to be.
What’s also
strange is the way, after the taxi driver arrives without Shawn (who’s
apparently been ‘lost’ at one of the petrol stations), Subconsta feels
compelled to tell her dad the driver is Shawn. There was no need for the ruse.
Indeed, it seems contrived simply to advance the storyline. Of course, the
driver is boorish, loud and behaves nothing like an attentive fiancé.
But then the
crooks make their move. This is when the real fun begins, especially when a cop
friend (Mark Otieno) of dad’s arrives on the scene, greets the guests and
discretely goes. He seems hoodwinked by gun-wielding crooks who are essentially
holding the family hostage. But then there’s a twist or two just before the
show ends with bang, in Heartstrings’ inimitable style.
‘Nobody is
leaving’ runs from tonight (6:30 and 8:30pm) through Sunday.
Meanwhile,
at Daystar Valley Road (irrespective of the students strike), Prevail Arts are
bringing back ‘What Happens in the Night’. They had to bring back this gripping
murder mystery since it had only been staged once last month and that wasn’t
enough to satisfy audiences.
Written,
directed and produced by Martin Kigondu, the cast remains strong, with Chichi
Seii, Nick Ndeda (fresh from a sterling performance in Grease), Shiviske
Shivisi and Salim Gitau. It might even be a stronger performance Bilal Mwaura
replaces Mourad Sadat. But you’ll have to get to the 5pm show this Saturday to
find out for yourself.
Finally, one
reason the theatre may be slightly dry this holiday season is because many of
our best actors and actresses have shifted from the stage to work in film and
television.
Quite a few
of them got awarded last Saturday night during the seventh annual Kalasha TV
and Film awards. Among them are Catherine Kamau, Martin Githinji, Frank Kimani,
Wanjiku Njoroge and Anthony Ndungu, just to name a few. Congratulations to them
all!
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