Oladipo Agboluaje: Plays One - Oladipo Agboluaje

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façade of civilised normality, the stage is set for shocking secrets as each turn of event reveals the sham beneath the actions and statements of the motley, disingenuous characters. As tensions grow and recriminations fly, Agboluaje unpeels layers of seedy dealings, greed, sibling rivalries, unexpected alliances and union between unlikely characters, betrayals and intrigues underneath the peaceful polygamous family set-up and the rise of a new socio-economic order as power shifts to the late chief’s former servant, now Pastor and de-facto owner of the estate. The stage turns into a platform for characters to play out the dying throes of their fading dreams; old cores are dragged out for settling and once-secure alliances are exposed as shams. The Estate is a very dynamic play, the episodic structure, strong storyline and rich pickings of subjects and complex multi-dimensional characters such as Pakimi who gives religion and pastors a bad name and the domestic servants cast in the moulds of cunning conniving servants of old comedy will delight producers, directors and actors alike. Like good comedy of the serious and funny category in which events take unexpected turns and supposedly harmless statements lead to surprising revelations, the play handles characters and their shenanigans with theatrical dexterity.

      Power relations and intrigue, marginalisation, corruption and manipulation are expounded in the tragic social satire, The Christ of Coldharbour Lane. Set in the seedy underworld of Brixton, England where it is difficult to separate religion and manipulation, and where social deprivation often dovetails into crime, the play is unusual in its combination of a complex plot and episodic structure. The result is a complicated, fairly difficult play in which Agboluaje communicates his satirical take on the connection between poverty and faith in the supernatural and people’s reliance on charlatans and deluded schizophrenics like the main character, Omotunde, for answers to their problems. The playwright retains his interest in motley characters; this time they are not only hapless and trapped, their situation and setting are used as barometers for exploring how the damaging effects of government’s policy on gentrification impacts the very marginal sections of society the policy was designed to help. In the play Agboluaje explores competing subjectivities, none clearly defined and none capable of surviving in the socio-economic chaos of a specifically postmodern setting. The tragic outcome plays out on all levels and there is neither hope nor redemption: Dona, convert to the Mission and trainee for leadership; hardened sex-worker, Maria; and Sarah, wheel-chair bound, unemployed dole collector, all surrender their capacities for action whilst creating the platform for religious hacks and con artists to thrive.

      The Hounding of David Oluwale, a stage adaptation of Kester Aspden’s novel of the same title is a documentary drama based on the discovery on May 4 1969, of the battered body of 38-year-old schizophrenic, David Oluwale in the river. The play follows the style of a forensic investigation and relies on official records and eyewitness accounts to unearth the official white-wash surrounding the verdict of death by misadventure reached by the police inquiry into the victim’s death. In the style of a true documentary, the play returns to the scenes of incidents and uses witnesses’ accounts and official records to reconstruct the facts, one of such witnesses being David Oluwale’s ghost who guides DCS John Perkins and the audience on a public inquiry into the circumstances of his death. The play avoids the polemics and theatrics of head-on confrontation of racial discrimination, stereotyping and prejudice. Avoiding the distraction in such an approach Agboluaje uses the legal framework and setting of the court to probe the victim and his victimisers and in the process pieces together various raw evidences and compelling counter-arguments that expose the institutional racism and stereotyping reminiscent of the 1998 public inquiry into the racist killing of 18-year-old black teenager, Stephen Lawrence in 1993 in Eltham, south-east London. However, unlike Sir William Macpherson who came to the damning conclusion that the police in the Stephen Lawrence case was institutionally racist after examining the original Metropolitan Police Service investigation, the un-named Judge in The Hounding of David Oluwale goes through the same judicial process before coming to a slightly different conclusion; he avoids mentioning the role racism played in David’s death and blamed the actions of a few police officers instead of the whole police force. As in his other plays in this volume, Agboluaje uses the microcosm or the actions of a small section of the population to expose the cultural tensions beneath the surface of society.

      Similar to The Estate, the prequel Iyale (The First Wife) is a fastmoving play with many twists. It does not disappoint and reveals the shaky family foundations and social deprivations beneath the behaviours, cunning and graft exhibited by characters in The Estate. Iyale foregrounds the events and characters in The Estate by exposing the genesis of the self-serving selfishness, greed, betrayal and official corruption in The Estate as the surface symptoms of deep-rooted scars and problems on the nation’s psyche. In effect, the muted fatuousness and excesses we see in The Estate are not mere aberrations, they can be traced to a historical pattern of abuses characterized by political high-handedness and excesses that the population turn a blind eye to and condone for personal and cultural reasons. In effect, the actions of the characters; Pastor Pakimi’s betrayal of his religious vow and calling, the corruption of the ruling political and military elites, the sexual predation of Chief Adeyemi and the domestic abuse he inflicts on his stiff upper-lipped conscientious first wife, the shameless disloyalty and infidelity displayed by sexually voracious house-girl and lover to Pakimi, Chief Adeyemi and his son, Yinka, are all symptomatic of bigger problems at all levels of society. In the midst of such huge moral, ethical, and religious deficits and absence of cultural and political censures, religious quacks, corrupt politicians and soldiers, and social miscreants become the shocking role models to a citizenship that is driven only by its own mindless pursuit of excess. It is not surprising that the citizens including the socially disadvantaged servants like Helen and Pakimi will stop at nothing to achieve their nefarious personal goals, irrespective of the damage they cause on the way. A reading of Iyale (The First Wife) and The Estate together before performing either will offer directors and actors useful insights and workshop materials for characters and situations.

      In conclusion, Agboluaje’s plays can be described as episodic with a strong narrative thread. His writing style is framed by a subtly evocative exploration of subjects, themes and characters that is akin to a witnessing of facts than a debate. His characters and language are physical, his narrative or storylines reveal without the need for polemics or soapbox rhetoric. His images speak for themselves and require little embellishing; even when they are deployed as counter-narratives their purpose seems to be to witness and show. The plays in this volume strike a dialogic centrist note. The syncretic dramaturgy Agboluaje uses in them is not necessarily an act of postcolonial appropriation or postmodern posturing, his style and plays are his responses to the artistic and historical necessities to stage his readings of postcolonial, postmodern, and diaspora realities as he sees them.

      Dr Victor I. Ukaegbu

      Associate Professor, Theatre and Performance

      Department of Media, English, Cultural Studies & Performance

      School of The Arts, The University of Northampton

      Associate Editor, African Performance Review General Secretary, African Theatre Association

      REFERENCES

      • Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth, Tiffin, Helen (1989) The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge.

      • Breisach, Ernst (2003) On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and its Aftermath. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

      • Buonanno, Giovanna, Sams, Victoria, Schlote, Christane (2011) ‘Glocal Routes in British Asian Drama: Between Adaptation and Tradaptation’ in Postcolonial Text Vol 6, No 2; pp. 1–18.

      • Hall, Stuart (1993) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ in Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial theory: A Reader. Eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Williams. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf; pp. 392–403.

      • McMillan, Michael (2006) ‘Rebaptizing the World in Our Terms: Black Theatre and Live Arts in Britain’ in Staging New Britain: Aspects of Black and South Asian British Theatre practice; pp. 47–64.

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