By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 17 July 2017)
Fred Mbogo
has all the makings of becoming Kenya’s version of an Athod Fugard. Not that he
has to imitate or take the lead from any other African writer. But to note that
both have a penchant for producing intense two-handers that grapple with
complex contemporary social issues in surprising and original ways is to
appreciate the compatibility of the two playwrights.
Both also
create complicated characters who explore explosive themes in an edgy,
emotionally-risky way. That’s what Fugard did in plays like ‘The Island’ and ‘Sizwe
Banzi is Dead’. It is also what Mbogo has done in ‘The Dying Need No Shoes’
which was staged last weekend in the Cheche Gallery of the Kenya Cultural
Centre.
Directed by
Esther Kamba who did the same for Fred when they co-produced ‘Ajali Kwenye
Ndoto’ among other plays, the stage design of a sort of theatre-in-the-round by
Pauline Sifuna made the performance all the more intimate but frankly shocking.
Shocking in
several senses, first because we rarely see plays that address the issue of
incest; yet Mbogo does it in a way that only comes to light gradually. For when
the show opens, Nice Githinji as Purity is knocked out flat on the ground and
shoeless. Her first words are incoherent, but we soon learn that’s intentional.
The girl had been drugged.
In the opposite
corner, on the diagonal across from Purity’s prone body is a half-naked man who
we quickly learn is her father (Ben Tekee), a university professor who has a
preference for plucking innocent freshman females from his classroom and charming
them into bed. We don’t initially ‘get’ that Purity is one of those innocents.
It only comes to light as the soporific effect of the drug wears off, and she
remembers where she is and why.
That
recollection is one of the other stunning aspects of ‘Shoes’. For Purity is
unintelligible in her early utterances, even as she speaks of death and makes
an effort to commit suicide herself.
Her suicide
attempt is one of the many surprises one watches unfold in ‘The Dying need no Shoes’.
She tries to drown herself in her father’s bathtub and nearly succeeds, only
that the Professor arrives in the nick of time and drags her from the tub.
Purity is
literally drenched. To remedy the situation, the father effectively changes her
clothes right on stage. That act alone might have alerted some keen observers
to the intimacy the two have shared. It also suggests that just as she had
little to do with the clothing change, so she wasn’t cognizant of her father’s
sexual abuse while she was drugged.
It’s not
clear why the father wants her dead although he sounds like a cultic fanatic
when claiming death will take her to paradise. He even tries to convince her to
write her own suicide note to justify why death is the right path for her to
take.
Nonetheless,
it’s around this time that the drug’s effect starts to wear off. When she
refuses to write the note, the ‘domestic violence’ takes a more physical form
as his ugly patriarchal attitude towards women, including towards his late wife
and Purity, comes out.
The more she
resists, the more she comes to realize she’s been drugged and raped for nights
on end. But for some reason (possibly because he thinks this is the day she’ll
die), he skips drugging her that day.
Now is when
Purity challenges not only his authority, but also his innocence of her
mother’s demise. Hers is a damning indictment of him, and by extension, of
every misogynist male who can’t cope with women’s right to choose how they want
to be, independent and free from a ‘big man’s ‘permission’.
The ending
of ‘Shoes’ is also disturbing as Purity finally gets the upper hand. The
revenge she inflicts on her dad is as flabbergasting as is much of this amazing
one-hour two-hander. But the set falls into total darkness before we can be
assured the Professor drown in the same bathtub that Purity almost did.
The ending
of ‘The Dying need no Shoes’ should generate controversy, especially as Purity
has all our sympathy up to the end. Ultimately, Mbogo has scripted a
spell-binding show and selected two very versatile actors who made their
characters utterly credible. The Professor has been obsessed with death for
years and written tomes about it, so it might seem appropriate for him to
finally get a taste of his own medicine.
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