A CHEATERS’ GUIDE ILLUSTRATED

 

BY Margaretta wa Gacheru (written July 17, 2022)

‘How to have an Affair: A Cheaters’ Guide’ is a scandalously funny two-hander, co-starring Nice Githinji and Charles Oudo, directed by Nyokabi Macharia.

Having such a suggestive title, you might think the show would attract house-full audiences every night, especially as it was staged at Ukumbi Mdogo. And you’d be correct.

It was the debut of the play which was adapted and indigenized by ‘Shorts from Africa’, the theatre company that’d essentially devised the script, having drawn from an array of sources. But it was also the debut of Shorts from Africa, which was started by Nice and Nyokabi who began working together during COVID.

“We both were part of an experimental online theatre project that brought together actors from all over the world,” says Nyokabi, citing the project’s organizers as Balcony Arts. Their second project was entitled Shorts Around the World which is what spurred the two women on to create Shorts from Africa and later develop “a cheaters’ guide”.

The show takes you inside the heads of two married individuals as they illustrate exactly how ‘it’ is done, how to have an affair and effectively cheat on the other interested parties effectively. That might sound like a shockingly salacious premise on which to formulate a play. In fact, the eroticism itself, suggested in the title, could be titillating and tantalizing to others.

As it turns out, the play is both salacious and erotic yet cerebral and thought provoking. Kendi (Nice) initially raises the salient question, why do women risk everything to chase men they know they will never marry? Similarly, Harun (Charles) raises the disturbing question asking why men screw around at all?  Could it be as simple as Harun suggests? He claims he has screwed countless women simply because he can and because he loves women. What in his case has been troubling is the question, why do men stop screwing around which is a more unusual problem that he’s apparently confronted with in A cheaters’ guide.

Well, not exactly he’s definitely waylaid from cheating on more than one after his encounter with Kendi.

Initially, Harun takes up his habitual role of charming Casanova who’s an expert in the art of seduction. We watch their wooing game where she looks befuddled and easy prey, and he looks confident in turning on the sexy charm that normally knocks them out every time. But in Kendi’s case, after two or three casual yet evocative meetings, she drops all pretenses and tells him plainly she has the afternoon free and basically available to him.

The next scene is the high point of sexual ‘shock and awe’; of hilarity and the unexpected. It’s a shocker to see Kendi being so candid, aggressive, and insatiable all at once. It’s also awesome because it’s so cleverly handled by the set designer Muthoni Gitau and the director Nyokabi Macharia. They fabricate the glossy white translucent curtain behind which Kendi and Harun have their first intimate encounter that gets hot, hotter, hottest with Kendi apparently the aggressor and intoxicator of Harun who doesn’t know what hit him.

Speaking of set design, Muthoni assembled a beautifully modern set complete with an upright mattress and pillows that lend a much more ‘innocent’ portrait of what goes on between the couple. Even the foyer of Ukumbi Mdogo got a makeover by ‘Shorts from Africa’ as there was seating for early birds who’d never before found a place to sit while waiting for the theatre doors to open wide.

In the final analysis, it’s the acting that makes the Cheaters’ Guide such a marvelous performance. Taking on such a delicate topic with sensitivity that tells a story that is rarely revealed. It is what actually happens in terms of the rise and fall (pun intended) of relationships, sexual liaisons that can never work because the initial passion and pleasure never be sustained with the same intensity as that initial hook-up. It can never elicit the same adrenaline that ran rapidly through the cheaters’ veins during that first ‘close encounter’.

Also, the cheaters’ fling can rarely retain the commitment initially implied or hoped. Anyone who thinks otherwise is sadly deluded. Not that marriage is the only alternative, but when there are children involved, it’s hard to keep that ‘pango wa kondo’ if you have even a small sense of responsibility for the children’s lives.

Kendi ultimately gives up on Harun because she finally sees how he’s increasingly putting his family’s needs before her own. How could it be any other way?

 

                                                                        Nyokabi Macharia, director