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.
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