WOO TO THOSE WANTING TO BE 'YOUNG, RICH, AND FAMOUS

One lesson to be learned from the Doria Production of ‘Young, Rich, and Famous’ is that it can be hazardous to aspire to such a materialistic goal. Even deadly as one saw in the final moments of Derrick Wasswa’s new play. Another lesson that might be wise for aspiring playwrights to learn is that it doesn’t necessarily pay the serve your production as both scriptwriter and director. That’s because every writer needs a second (or third) pair of eyes to critically appraise the writer’s work. Otherwise, they might discover on opening night that there are glaring gaps in the production, or loose ends that don’t get tied up or resolved or other issues that they didn’t see until confronted by audience members who want to know what became of so-and-so or other similar questions. In Wasswa’s case, I would be one of the first to inquire, what happened to the guy behind bars in the first scene? Was he left to languish in jail for the rest of his days simply because he, after joining the military, didn’t follow his commander’s order to shoot everyone he encounters in some village where terrorists are said to exist? What I learned from one kind-hearted cast member after the play was that the young woman, aiming to help the man in jail get out on ethical grounds, was actually the baby born to the rich and famous woman who dies at the story’s end. Apparently twenty odd years have elapsed since the flashback had taken place and the baby Claudine was born to Clara. But we can’t be sure who the father was. It would seem that Kingstone, the rich man and sugar daddy who had given Clara five million before he had her shot, was Claudine’s dad. It would also seem that Claudine was transformed from being a sort of social worker or law intern into the story’s narrator. She’s the one to take us back in time via flashback to meet her mum, the young woman wanting nothing more in life than to be young, rich and famous. It doesn’t matter to her that she had disrupted another woman’s life, the genuine wife of Kingstone, Angelica. Clara had already let him buy her a fully furnished flat where she stayed with her mum. He has even given her his credit card to go shop to her heart’s content. But the one thing that turns his love into deadly intent is her insistence on having the baby that he has insisted she abort, but she refuses. That becomes his grounds for getting rid of her. He has other men carry out the deed and somehow, her baby survives. But that’s how fast one can lose their wealth, fame, and life itself. So the third and final lesson learned from Wasswa’s play is that it’s rarely a brilliant idea to create a complicated plot, then include lots of exotic, erotic dancing to titillate story’s complexities with the aid of another cast member who helped me draw two family trees, one for Clara whose mom was Angelica, a woman whose lover had been Kingstone until he got involved with her daughter Clara. After that she became Kingstone’s accomplice in his scheme to get his money back and the baby eliminated. The other family tree was for Kingstone and his wife Angelica who discovers her man had left zero cash in the bank. She learns where all the money went. It is thereafter that she gets involved in selling Clara an insurance policy that includes a clause ensuring that, if anything happens to her, all her funds will go back to Kingstone. Okay, that’s a bit crazy, but if Clara sees through this scheme, it is already too late for her to change the insurance policy. But she doesn’t see this coming. For in the blink of an eye, she gets attack and bang! She is dead. But that’s not the end of violence. One other person wants revenge for the assassination of her dad. It’s Yolanda who knows Kingstone killed her real dad, had never really warmed up to her step-dad Kingstone. She hires hitmen to polish him off. But then, at the last minute, she gets cold feet and tries to stop his murder. When she gets to the scene where the murder is scheduled, she tries to stop it. Instead, the lights go off, we hear the shot, and we assume Kingstone was hit. If it sounds like an easy story to understand, think again Mr Wasswa.