READING OF KIGONDU’S MATCHSTICK MEN WORKED

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted December 10, 2022) There are stage productions, and then, there are stage Readings which only include the actors and the script. Readings are part of a larger creative process leading to what will become a full-scale production. When you get brilliant actors reading an equally outstanding script which has already been staged once or twice, the Reading can become a classic moment when the soul of the play comes to light. It leaves one wondering why more scripts do not undergo public ‘readings’, especially if they are produced as Esther Kamba did last Friday night when she invited her audience to stay after the Reading of Matchstick Man and speak to its playwright, Martin Kigondu. In the reading of his script, Sam Psenjin and Nick Ndeda gave much more than a simple read-through of a play that may soon become a film. It was upstairs at the Kenya Cultural Centre that the actors (two of Nairobi’s finest) took the plunge into the depths of Kigondu’s mentally fractured characters to give fascinating performances. Initially, it isn’t easy to figure out who is the patient and who’s the therapist in what we gradually realize is a mental asylum. Both Seth (Psenjin) and Fatili (Ndeda) are flawed. At the same time, both have moments when they are lucid and able to behave like professional shrinks, psychiatric workers challenging the other to get down deep into the recesses of his mind. Be assured, Matchstick Men is no comedy although there is an undercurrent of wit starting with the way the actual patient, Seth, puts on the doctor’s white medical jacket and behaves as if the jacket makes him that man.

But the psychological games that Seth plays frustrate Fatili at the outset. It is understandable that during the ‘Q and A’ that followed the readings, more than one inquisitor in the audience hadn’t found Kigondu’s characters the easiest characters to understand. Fortunately, Martin was on hand to explain how he’d wanted to explore issues of mental health in his play. But that required the portrayal of one character, Seth, who was mentally imbalanced, to be reached through the mental touch of another equally flawed character. In fact, both men had effectively blocked memories of events in their lives that had been traumatizing. So much so that Seth didn’t recall that he was effectively responsible for his father’s death. As a child he had watched his father turn his mother into “a punching bag”, but one day it was too much and the little boy pushed his dad down a long flight of stairs, at the bottom of which the old man was found dead. He was never seen as culpable since his mother swore it was suicide. But that event subsequently led to his amnesia about everything associated with it. Ultimately, we find out that Fatili had understood the mental blockages in Seth’s mind and felt it was imperative the truth be exposed so the man could regain control over his life. But before that could take place, we first had to learn how Seth and Fatili were somehow related. It’s because Fatili fell in love with Seth’s crazy sister with whom he had a child. It’s not quite clear what happened to the sister although she was with Fatili four years and these were terribly frustrating times for him. So much so that he apparently had beaten her bloody and the court thus denied him access to their child. This distressed him a great deal. But he too had blocked the memory of his deeds of domestic violence which were also brought out in the reading.

Eventually, Fatili gives a full disclosure, first, of his identity as a psychiatrist who had concealed his professional identity from Seth intentionally for weeks. What’s more, he had wanted to heal Seth by helping him break through his mental blocks and face the realities of his history. His motives were not purely altruistic, however since he has only one means of regaining access to his child. And that is to have a family member of his ‘wife’s sign documents that would confirm his paternity. In the end, Fatili gets both of these, so the reading ends on a relatively happy note. It resolves loose ends, but doesn’t quite satisfy. In any case, one must applaud Kigondu for interweaving several significant moments in Kenya’s post-independent history, such as the 1982 coup plot and the 2007-2008 post-election violence as factors contributing to Kenyan deteriorating mental health. All in all, a brilliant piece of writing.

LION KING CAME TO NAIROBI BUT FEW KNEW

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (5 December 2022) The blockbuster musical, The Lion King offered a marvelous opportunity to 132 students of St Mary’s Sportsview Academy to perform, many for the first time, before a live audience last weekend. Students from between ages 8 and 10 streamed onto the main auditorium stage at Braeburn Garden Estate School last Saturday. They were dressed in colorful costumes made to look like everything from birds, hyenas, and wild warthogs to zebra, leopards, and of course, lions. They also danced to nearly all the classic Disney-generated songs (like Spirit of Life and Hakuna Matata) that some of them knew by heart even before the decision had been made, to produce the award-winning musical, assisted by Nairobi Performing Arts Studio (NPAS).

Stuart Nash and his talented team of teachers had been working with St Mary’s Sportsview students for almost year. “But we only began rehearsals for The Lion King since July-early August,” NPAS’s founder and artistic director Stuart Nash told BDLife right after Saturday’s 6pm show. A few of the starring roles, like those of the Lion King, Mufaso (Alladeenski) and his villainous brother Scar (Gadwell Ochieng) were played by NPAS teachers. So was the marvelous monkey, Rafiki (Rita Gitau) who showed up towards the end of the play to convince the guilt-ridden and now grown-up Simba (Kenton Kirimi) that it was time to forgive himself and return home to claim his crown. But the one who finally convinced him to come back was Nala (Fiona Ndungu) who as a little cub (Jasmine Amani) was the younger Simba’s (Godwin Kioria) best friend. She is the one who convinced him to give up the ‘hakuna matatu’, don’t care mentality of mediocrity and remember who he was so he could fulfill his destiny and accept his true identity as the lion King.

But besides the lead characters, there were a number of talented children who stood out as stars in the show. They include students like Brandon Kariuki who played Timon, Thabiso Ndlela (Shenzi), Ruhammah Mpapale (Pumba), and Fabiola Tiffany Mukami who played Zazu. We expect to see all of them in future shows. “St Mary’s Sportsview is run with the Kenya national curriculum,” Nash said. “The only difference between it and most other national schools is that the school chose to include theatre arts in their required curriculum,” he added. When asked why they did that, Nash suggested he couldn’t speak for the school, except he knew the children wanted it. That sort enthusiasm for theatre was apparent on Saturday night when the student cast was clearly having fun doing fancy footwork which they had learned from Alladeenski who also helped NPAS choreograph its other productions, including Sarafina and Ngugi wa Thiongo’s I’ll Marry When I Want. What I found curious about the Lion King, which is supposedly designed for children to watch, is just how violent it is. For example, Scar is serious scary as he assigns his hyenas troops to go kill the King and his son so as to ensure he takes over the kingdom, the title, and the power himself.

Scar’s malevolence is palpable, which is a credit to the actor Gadwell Ochieng. He plays a brilliantly wicked villain, but one I wouldn’t want my child to know too much about. Nash effectively directed the riotous scene in which we watched the hyenas assassinate the king right before our eyes. It wasn’t easy to watch, but neither was Simba’s grief when he found the dead corpse of his dad. These were emotionally wrenching moments. So was the next one in which Scar convinced Simba that he was indeed responsible for his father’s death, so he would be smart to run away as far and as fast as he could. These were all lies. Again, I must say the acting was so good that it was troubling to see how much of a life was lost by the lion prince accepting as truth what was a flat-out lie, that he was and would forever be guilty of his father’s murder.

This, of course, is one of the features of good theatre. It is that the tension between good and evil must be so tight and tense as to keep one gripped by the intensity of fraught feelings until something has to give. Either side has to win or lose. In this case, the winner has to ultimately be the Lion King. But the boy had to first learn lessons in manhood, and it frankly took a loving woman to teach him that.

ROBINSON CRUSOE A PANTO TREAT FOR THE HOLIDAY

Pantomime is a peculiar form of musical theatre that gets staged as part of pre-Christmas festivities. It is a tradition that the British are particularly fond of performing, especially when they’ve got children at home for the holidays and needing to be entertained in the most light-hearted and fanciful way. Pantomimes have specific rules that define the genre. For instance, it is meant to be slapstick comedy that’s silly in a way that small children can find fun and enchanting at the same time. In fact, children are the primary audience of pantomime, although adults who appreciate the tradition tend to adore the silly jokes, puns, and double entendre.

Pantos can also feature word games such as those we saw last weekend when Braeburn Players staged ‘Robinson Crusoe and the Pirates’ at Braeburn Theatre (Gitanga). In keeping with tradition, ‘Crusoe’ followed all the rules of the genre, an important one being that it must be interactive and participatory. The best character to ensure those things happened was Nutty Nick (Daniel Lee Hird). He was not only the happiest and most hilarious jumping-jack man. He was also the most enthusiastic engager of the children who filled the audience last Sunday afternoon. He managed to turn them all into watchdogs ready to sound a shouting alarm the moment anyone went near his bag of nuts, and of course, many characters did. Some were pirates, others buccaneers, but anyone who made a move towards his precious nuts got called out by an audience fully engaged in Nutty Nick’s energetic escapades. Like a pied piper, he even managed to call them all to come up on stage, since his ship had ‘landed’ in Mombasa on its way back to Brazil where he lived with his mother, Margarita Juicilita (James Campbell). For Margarita to be played by a man was in keeping with the rules. This one relates to a gender role reversal whereby a man must play a female lead and a female must perform as a man. Again, it is just for fun and a way of making the show seem sillier and more slapstick. Margarita herself is a big ‘girl’, a lady with a bright orange-braided wig and buxom body who ends up marrying Captain Sea Salt (Terry Childs). But all that comes after the Captain’s first ship gets wrecked and he needs a new crew to get going on his planned voyage. That’s how Nutty Nick gets a job joining the new crew as does his mum, serving as the ship’s new cook.

The other side of the gender role reversal was taken over by Robinson Crusoe him/herself. He was played by the lovely and light-footed Rotem Yaniv-Cohen who was in love with the Captain’s daughter, Juanita (Mariam Mohiddin-Jones). He joins the Captain’s crew as a way of proving to the dad that he is worthy of his daughter’s hand in marriage. But before that could happen, his ship had to get shipwrecked and he get stranded on a tropical island for many days. The story that unfolds in the pantomime runs loosely along the same line as the Daniel Defoe novel of 1719 which portrays Crusoe as a British colonial for whom the world is probably part of his British empire. Certainly, the panto itself reflects a heap of colonial attitudes that need not be catalogued. And yet, the tropical islands are filled with dancing natives, witchdoctors, and cannibals who we are fortunate not to see on stage (only in the book that was initially believed to be autobiographical).

One other rule of pantomime is that the costuming must be colorful and ‘eccentric’. In fact, the costumes are superb, especially the ones worn by the teams of dancers who wore everything from grass skirts to matching kitenge. The multiple backdrops by Taryn Bebbington and set designs generated by Jenny Childs and her team were also colorful, beautifully painted, and well-designed. But probably the most important rule that Crusoe followed was its storyline being based on the basic bad guys versus good. The baddies included Davy Jones (Chris Childs) who aimed to put Robinson inside his under-water locker and leave him there, and the ruthless pirate, Cut-Throat (Richard Hooper) who was out to find the mysterious treasure using the map drafted by Margarita’s late spouse.

Naturally, it is the good guys who prevail. They find the treasure, Crusoe wins Juanita’s hand, and they live happily ever after, like every good fairy tale.

AGEISM DEFIED BY THE KU ‘COUGAR’

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (written September 30,2022) The Cougar, which was first staged at KU and came back last weekend at KCC, is all about a wealthy businesswoman, named Nelly (Joy Kairu) who falls in love with a young man who coincidentally is the same age as her best friend (Rebecca Chemcutai) Mary’s son Nun. Nun (Trevor Aseri) had never met his mother’s BFF while growing up. And she had never seen him before her employee Jeff (Ian Wachira) brought him to check out a possible job in her company (which he did at KU). Once she set her eyes on him, the sparks began to fly. Apparently, he was attracted to her too. However, he was already ‘taken’ by Calmer (Laureen Wangari), a sweet young innocent who was Jeff’s life-long friend. (For some reason, their encounter was removed by Cougar director Victor Muyekwe.) Jeff is at the centre of this story since he knows both Nun and Calmer well. He is also a trusted employee of Nelly. Yet we don’t know much about him. In fact, we don’t know back stories for any of the characters in the play. Muyekwe is a playwright who both scripted and directed The Cougar. He also started his own theatre company, which is admirable. But in future, he will need to flesh out his characters more. What we do know about Jeff from his behavior is that he’s schizophrenic and has horrific mood swings even when he speaks to Calmer, the girl he claims to love. He claims he never told her his true feelings for her because he feared rejection. That anxiety could be the cause of his bottled-up emotions bursting out abruptly while trying to speak about his feelings for her. It's the Cougar that we would like to know better. We don’t know if she had ever been married or if she has hung out with many men. We don’t know how wealthy she is or where that wealth came from. Did she inherit it, earn it through her own sweat or through the sweat of her staff? In any case, Nellie has it and wants someone to share it with. Why doesn’t she find someone her own age, her friend Mary asks after Nellie reveals she’s in love with a younger man. In principle, Mary is against the whole concept of the older predatory female cougar. Even before she discovers that Nellie’s lover is her son, Mary is adamantly opposed to cougarism. She doesn’t buy the idea that she is limiting her friend’s freedom of choice. To her it is immoral. And besides, what would other people think? Nellie couldn’t care less. Another issue of the character development has to do with Nun. Here is a guy who, one-minute expresses ‘eternal love’ for Calmer, but the next minute he adores Nellie and carelessly dumps his campus queen Calmer. Jeff sheds some light on Nun’s character when he tries to tell Calmer Jeff made a play for her to prove to Jeff that he had the power to do it. Part of the reason we don’t understand Nun well is Muyekwe’s directorial decision to remove the scene where he and the Cougar first meet.After that, we see no evolution of their affair so we still wonder about his motivation. We know he’s told Jeff he was overwhelmed with loving emotions for Nell from the outset. But really, is it ‘true love’ that he feels or does he simply look forward to enjoying the security of her money? The one character whose intentions are clear is Jeff. He’s been hot for Calmer since childhood but never dared to tell her so. Now that she confirms his worst fear, that she’d reject him, he’s convinced he has not choice, “If he can’t have her in life, then they can be forever together in death,” Victor tells BDLife at KU during my two hour wait for his show to begin. There were two fight scenes at KCC. One in which calmer tries to clobber Nun for robbing her of her virginity and leaving her like a stray dog. The other is where the two older women tussle until they are interrupted by Calmer’s dying before their eyes, having drunk the poison prepared for her by Jeff who follows after her having suicidally drunk the same stuff as her. Cougar came off better in some respects at KCC. But the lost scene which was present at KU made the show more understandable and complete.

B2B's PORTRAIT OF A PROSTITUTE TOLD WITH EMPATHY

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted December 4, 2022) Mbeki Mwalimu and Back to Basics (B2B) took their time coming back to the Nairobi stage. But it was worth the wait after Mwalimu and her team went out to do their own eye-witness research into an under-privileged life they don’t pretend to understand first-hand. By happenstance, Mwalimu met a man who distributes sanitary pads to women and girls in Korogocho slum. His stories of the women’s lives inspired her to go meet them herself and learn more about the challenges they face. What she found is not exactly what happens in their new play, ‘Market Price’ which was staged last weekend at the Jain Bhavan Auditorium. Nyokabi Macharia, playing the journalist who ventured forth into the slum like some voyeur without a clue, isn’t meant to replicate the founder of B2B. But this stunning piece of writing, workshopped and then written by Saumu Kombo was definitely inspired by the women’s trip to Korogocho where they encountered life-styles they had never imagined before they had gone to meet women whose stories are synthesized and portrayed as Zamzam by Mary Mwikali. ‘Market price’ reveals the raw and risky world that especially women and girls lead in the slums of the city. It is a harsh story, but one told with immense empathy and depth of feeling as we witness with Zamzam’s life story embodied as flashback as the stage and set serve as a sort of ‘split screen’.

This was the first time Wakio Nzenge directed a B2B play and she did a brilliant job (although we don’t want to lose Wakio, the charismatic actor). She also worked with set designer, Isaac Njue to fill the vast Jain stage with three different slum sites, all made with mabati (rusty corrugated iron sheets) and cardboard, just like the originals). All three sets are inspired by the story Zamzam shares as part of the interview she gives to the flippant journalist who could hardly conceal her shock as the facts of Zamzam’s life unfolds on the second and third sets, designed to allow us to see in graphic detail how Zamzam grew up prostituting herself for food, just as her mother and grandmother did before her.

Nyokabi’s reporter had come apparently to do a story on some laudable lady distributing sanitary pads to fellow slum-dwellers. She had no idea that she would get to see the sordid and sad story of a child who never had a childhood, never went to school, and rarely knew her mom as a sober elder who wanted the best for her baby. Instead, Zamzam’s adult interview takes us back to the days when the young Zamzam (played by an amazing Sandra Chaoota) has to beg her drunken mother (Mkamzee Mwatela) for a few coins so she can buy food. When the mom has nothing to give, she has to quickly learn her mother’s erotic craft as her one means of eating anything at all.

Ironically, it is when she, at age 14, starts prostituting herself, her mom has much to tell her about men and how never ever trust them. She is passionate about her child not making the same mistakes that she did, in having faith in men. It rarely paid, and could even be life-threatening, as we saw, when one client had no means to pay. Zamzam the elder tells her story without shame since she believes she had no choice. Her own daughter Nicole (Shiviske Shivisi) is already prostituting herself as she confesses to the journalist who can hardly believe she’s interviewing prostitutes. Nyokabi starts off the play, miming and making her way past the ditches and filthy paths leading to Zamzam’s mabati ‘flat’. The drawings on the wall suggest Zamzam could have been an artist if she had a chance to broaden her outlook on life. But poverty had locked her into the slum world when the journalist is shocked to see that Zamzam didn’t even have friendly neighbors to advise or show her a way out.

Market Price is a tour de force that addresses a whole slew of women’s issues including the plight of single mothers and the immense need of many young women and girls for mentors and a helping hand to give them hope of a better life. At the end of the play, Mbeki threw in a pitch for Fred Ogolla’s Restoring Dignity Korogocho, the organization that first inspired her to make slum life the focus of her current play.

DEEP DRAMA IN KIGONDU'S BLESSED FRUITS

It had to be the most thrilling dramatic performance that I have seen in Nairobi for a very long time. ‘Blessed be the fruit’ brought together three of the most dynamic and finely-tuned female actors to Ukumbi Mdogo to keep us rivetted to our seats as we watched Martin Kigondu’s marvelous adaptation of the award-winning play, Agnes of God. I for one sat on the edge of my seat as I watched psychiatrist Dr Martha (Helena Waithera) try to get to the bottom of a most peculiar case. She had been called by the court to investigate the case of the novice nun, Agnes (Lorna Lemi) who had been found bloodied, unconscious, but nearby a dead baby, presumably her own. It was also presumed someone had hidden the dead child who had been found with its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck and stashed away so as not to be easily found.

The novice Agnes was yet to be charged. The Shrink was given the consequential task of determining whether the baby’s death was murder or mishap, whether Agnes should go either to prison or to a mental institution. Yet Dr Martha’s task turns out to be worse than pulling teeth. It’s complicated not only because Agnes contends she doesn’t remember a thing, that a baby’s birth and even the pregnancy never happened. Nor did she have an intimate encounter with a man. At the outset, Agnes barely speaks. She is clearly fearful, faultering, and apparently frail. In contrast is her Mother Superior Ruth Mary (Marrianne Nungo) who is tough as nails when it comes to her insistence that Agnes is innocent of all of these deeds. Mother is a cagey character who is also a deeply devout Catholic who knows the Church’s reputation is also on the line. She does everything in her power to avert a spotlight getting fixed on Agnes and the gruesome details of her tale.

The subtle, insidious style of her defense of Agnes’ innocence leads the Shrink to suspect that the Mother might even have a hand in this unusual cover-up which has been partially exposed. Certainly, no one is being forthcoming in giving out the straight forward answers to Martha’s incisive questions. But she refuses to stop, and the stealthy mental warfare that ensues between her and the Mother is fascinating to watch. It is Nongo at her best, being bold yet feminine, righteous but not pious or overtly superior, despite being the Mother Superior overseeing Agnes’ piety which is apparently sullied by the man who impregnated her.

The women’s tug of war to find the truth is intense. But it leads the Shrink and sleuth to turn to hypnosis in order to reach more deeply into Agnes’s mind where the truth must lie. But now we see the intense resistance of the novice who has blocked not only the baby but also her ugly upbringing by a sick mother who used to molest and beat her and not even allow her to go to school. It is no wonder Agnes is pathetic, but she has a resilient mental might that Lorna reveals in a powerful performance that is stunning, just as spine=tingling as was Marrianne as the Mother Superior who plays such an enigmatic character in this deep psychological play, the kind we rarely get to see done so masterfully.

The show would not have had the same mental mastery if it hadn’t been for Martin Kigondu’s directing. He knew what exactly wanted to emerge from this play and the actors provided it impeccably. Under hyponosis, Agnes reveals that she had not only been molested by her mother and told she was nothing and nobody from the moment she gained consciousness. This traumatized child was played with delicacy and a fighting determination to finally reclaim her agency when she admits she killed the new-born. But did she? Her confession under Martha’s hypnotic spell leads to Nongo’s crescendo moment when Agnes’s words set off an emotional volcano that somehow makes us believe the Mother was not a baby-killer, only a domineering presence and defender of her church and the novice nun.

Ultimately, Dr Martha lets us down when she says she recused herself from the case rather than pass judgment on either Agnes or the Church. The Court was left to decide that Agnes would go to a mental institution where she eventually dies. One can only wish there had been a happier ending to the story or at least one with a resolution. Instead, this ‘fruit’ is bittersweet but still a remarkable tale that needed to be told.

RADIUM GIRL TURNS WHISTLE-BLOWER FOR JUSTICE’S SAKE

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (written December 1, 2022) Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize as well as the first person to win two Nobel Prizes in Science. She is also the scientist who discovered radium and even championed the use of radiation in the field of medicine, which led to its utility in curing cancer. It's ironic then that for all the good that Curie’s discovery of radium has done, it had the exact opposite effect on the young women who worked with radium paint every day at the U.S. Radium Corporation in the 1920s. Many lost their teeth. Others, like Amalia Maggia in the play, ‘Radium Girls’, simply died from radium poisoning, derived from painting clock dials with luminous radium paint using fine-tipped brushes. The dire effects of working with radium and experiencing direct doses of radiation might not have been so bad but for the bosses at U.S. Radium who insisted the girls sharpen the wet points of their brushes with their lips. It's those young women workers’ story that got told last week when Rosslyn Academy produced D.W. Gregory’s play, ‘Radium Girls’, which is based on the book by Kate Moss, and subsequently made into a compelling film in 2020, based on the facts on the ground. In real life, the young women worked at three different radium paint factories in the US, one in Illinois, others in New Jersey and Connecticut. But the play is set in just one factory where the show’s director, Kirsten Krymusa, gave her cast the challenge of dramatizing this tragic and troubling tale about the exploitation of women workers and the pain that led one of them, namely Grace Fryer (Martina Haugland), to challenge the status quo and fight for the rights of dying and the dead. Radium Girls is not an easy story to watch, especially as the naivete of the young women makes them easy prey for the factory owners to exploit. Whether the bosses actually knew at the time that the luminosity from the radium was poisonous is not clear. But it’s more likely that they did. Their position is similar to that of the big oil companies that pretended they didn’t know fossil fuels (the source of petrol or gas) were destroying the ozone and polluting clean air. It’s also comparable to the tobacco companies that were forced by law to ultimately admit after many years, that they actually knew that cigarettes destroy lungs and finally, human life. In any case, the story is no comedy, and the drama comes once the girls start getting sick. Grace takes on the role of whistle blower, representing the reality of women workers who rose up in real life and challenged the bosses and the system.

Grace lost her job, of course. But she also found a supporter in Katherine Wiley (Magdelene Krymusa) who in turn helped her find the one lawyer, Raymond Berry (Josiah Githinji), who agreed to represent the women pro bono and fight Big Radium. The play is a fascinating study of both sides of a class war. There are the bosses at U.S. Radium, including its President Arthur Roeder (Danny Kathungu) and his VP Charles Lee (Seungwon Jeon). Their advocate was Edward Markley (Abigail Siegrist) who went to war against Grace and the girls she was fighting for. Grace was told often by many people to give up the battle, because she could never win. But she refused to listen. Ultimately towards the end of her life, and after her case went all the way to the Supreme Court, there was a settlement though not as significant as it should have been.

Still the story marks an important turning point in American labor history, and one that is also significant to women worldwide since it illustrates how strong women can be in fighting against dark, materialistic forces and defending the rights of the weak. It illustrates women as fighters not victims which is a source of inspiration to younger generations of girls who now can know that females don’t need to be limited by outmoded stereotypes which try to dictate how small they should remain, when they are not. Radium Girls reveals one more shameless fact about the capitalist profit motive. It also exposes the reasons why everyone should learn how to be a whistle-blower, someone who’s prepared to go out on a limb for truth and justice, by exposing and challenging the duplicitous, deceitful ways in which corporations can literally get away with murder.