HEARTSTRINGS' CHICKEN OR EGG FULL OF FUN AND FEROCITY

 HEARTSTRINGS HIGHLIGHT WAR BETWEEN WIVES AND IN-LAWS

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

Heartstrings came back on stage in fine form this past weekend with ’Chicken or the Egg’ at Alliance Francaise.

Their comedy was classic but it also got mixed with something I’ll call melodrama just because there was a heavy dosage of venom that spewed out of the mouths of mainly the women. It wasn’t pleasant or particularly funny.

But there was a method to this cantankerous madness in that everyone of the foul-mouth characters had their own agenda. When they got disrupted or frustrated, people took it out on others with insults that were understandable but crass.

First came Phyllis (Bernice Nthenya) the house help who’s been working with the Mrs Katana (Makrine Andala) for six years. She’s never nasty, only contrary when given orders she doesn’t want to fulfill. Like being ordered to get back to the kitchen when Katana’s sweet son Kagoe (Fischer Maina) is around.

The comic relief of the show is Uncle Diambo (Paul Ogola) who’s living in his sister’s house while he awaits receipt of his supposed ‘ten million’ shilling golden handshake which hasn’t arrived in the last 17 years. Diambo is either a conman or mooch or both. Either way, he’s family so he can’t be tossed. But Katana would gladly oust her son’s fiancée Rebecca (Adelyne Wairimu) if she had the power to do so. Her hostility towards Becca is palpable. And the reasons are clear. She adored her son and doesn’t want to share him with any woman. That’s contrary to her feelings for her daughter Gechokio (Eunice Muturi), considered the family failure ever since her marriage flopped.  

Katana’s other attachment to her son is business. He has all the fresh, innovative, entrepreneurial ideas which he shares with her. Before Rebecca came on the scene, he was devoted to his mom and happily built up her business which they were apparently meant to share. He provides the ideas and she has the investment capital to get them off the ground. So theirs is also a symbiotic relationship where one depends on the other.

Kagoe is clearly a sheltered young man who doesn’t know much about the wiles of women who can be just as cunning and manipulative as any man. Some would say the mama manipulates her son to live at home so he can run her money-making operations. That’s the mean-spirited argument of Mr. Mundo (Dadson Gakenga), Rebecca’s dad, who is clearly envious of the mama’s wealth and power. Others would argue that Rebecca is the manipulator who is out to destroy the loving relationship between mother and son since she also wants his undivided devotion.

That rivalry between wives and mothers-in-law exists in every culture, including Kenyan ones. So once again we find Heartstrings grappling, with a light touch, with a topic that many locals sadly understand.

Katana is exasperated with all the people that occupy her house, especially her sloppy brother and disappointing daughter. She’s also frustrated with Phyllis. But most of all, she’s infuriated with the arrival of Rebecca in her life.

One positive point I must hand to Heartstrings is the way they swiftly and logically move their script along. By Act 2, we already find Kagoe and Becca married and on their honeymoon. Katana has expanded their business as Kagoe had envisaged. But she desperately needs his aptitude in daily operations of their companies. When he returns early from the honeymoon and finds his mother unwell, he decides to replace the wife with the mom to use the remainder of the Honeymoon holiday so mom can relax and feel better. Rebecca literally explodes at this idea, and suddenly, nobody knows how the chips will fall.

Becca’s father compounds Katana’s problems by arguing on his daughter’s behalf. Seeking to undermine the mom by feeding Kagoe with wicked suggestions about her selfishness, Mundo seems successful in not only demolishing the mother-and-son bond. He also gives his daughter the guts to blast Kagoe for putting his mother first. She abuses him for being a mama’s boy, hands him back the wedding ring, and kaput! That’s the end of their marriage. Now the son is no better off than Gechokio, both having failed in their marriage.

But that’s not all. It’s Phyllis that has the last laugh. She also quits the job and splits with, of all people, the ’10 million shilling man’, Uncle Diambo! That ties up the last loose end, but we’re left with the Kanata household in shock and disarray.