SEMINARIANS REVIVE ROTIMI'S GODS NOT TO BLAME

11 November 2022 Last time I heard ‘The Gods are not to blame’ was being staged in Kenya was back in the 1970s. It has probably been performed somewhere since then. But not until last Sunday did I get a chance to see the acclaimed West African play live at the Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Karen. The play itself was a game-changer when it first got published in 1971, first because Nigerian playwright Ola Rotimi was a scholar in his own right. He drew inspiration for his play from the ancient Greek philosopher Sophocles’ tragedy, ‘Oedipus Rex’. But just as important as having a pithy plot about patricide and incest, and the debate between fate and free will, Rotimi also indigenized the script. He brought his characters back to what he envisaged as pre-colonial Africa, specifically to his own Yoruba-land which has its own pantheon of gods. Rotimi also interwove a slew of Yoruba proverbs into his characters’ lines. And while one wished a few of those pearls of wisdom could have been edited out since they slowed down the play’s momentum, the Drama Club’s back-stage crew were efficient in making set changes in no time. That’s just one thing to commend about the Seminarians’ play. Visually speaking, one could see how much care and creativity, time and thought had also gone into developing the costumes which were the best I have seen all year. So was the face and body painting. And even the set design was outstanding. One could see a kind of Yoruba iconography filling the walls, including a larger-than-life portrait of Ogun, the god of iron and of war. Another impressive feature of the production, which reflected a maturity on the part of both the actors and the directors, Dickson Ochieng and Michael Rading, was the way guys took on roles of women and girls and never flinched. They were so committed to keeping in character that one easily forgot we were watching young men playing a different gender, even as they did during Shakespearean times. All these factors enhanced the story that began with the soothsayer arriving to warn the Court that their new baby boy was destined to kill his father, the king and wed his mom, the queen. The soothsayer recommended the baby be slain. But of course, he wasn’t, even though the men who took the child to the bush had been told to finish him off. Instead, he grew up and by a string of coincidences, he returned to the land of his birth. The Seminarians did well to keep us, their audience, in a state of suspense as we wondered whether fate or free will would rule the day. Knowing Rotimi had modeled his script after Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, we knew the way things would end. Nonetheless, it was intriguing to see how this script brought Aderopo (Joshua Onyoni) back home. Now, a grown man and a stranger, he arrives when the kingdom has fallen apart. The people are demoralized, having been defeated in war, but he rallies their spirits. For this, he is beloved, leading to a vote to make him their new king, which he accepts. But after a time, the kingdom is hit by a killer plague which people say is derived from a curse. Now we’ve got a whodunit! Things start to unravel for the king once an old childhood friend arrives, loaded with a whole slew of mental triggers which lead to a salient flashback moment when the king recalls the way, years before, he had slain a pompous old man. From then on, there’s no issue of ‘fate or free will’. Now it’s only a matter of time before the truth comes to light. Unfortunately, those last 30 minutes were laborious. Apparently, Rotimi wanted to keep us on tender hooks. The slow-burning truth was painful to watch since one didn’t know how many clues the king would require before he’d admit the obvious. The original prophesy was true: he’d killed his dad, and wedded, and bedded his mom. And as in the original play the mom goes and commits suicide once she realizes the shame of her situation. And her husband-son also gouges out his eyes, although he didn’t abdicate the crown or commit suicide like his mother-wife. In any case, the play, ultimately is a tragedy just as the original was. More importantly, it set a high bar for Kenyan thespians to attain and accept the challenge just as the Seminarians did very well.