Peter Anny-Nzekwue is very critical of Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle's The Playboy of the Western World,
an adaptation of J. M. Synge's classic. He thinks that because of its lack of redemptive power, this African play sits Africa
on its head and destroys the core principles of African
humanity. He then challenges it to redeem itself.
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When The Playboy of the Western World played
to a full house on its opening night at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Ireland on the 3rd October 2007, I could count the number of Africans
present: Abel Ugba, Pamela Akinjobi, Celia Otubu, Tunji Sotimirin, Bisi Adigun, Yare Jegbefume, myself and a few others.
We did not number up to twenty. It should not have been so. For the African people love the good life: drink the choice
wine, wear designer clothes, ride in flashy cars, throw lavish parties, and revel in entertainment.
African people love the theatre. In the hustle and bustle of Lagos, in the
intemperate Bulawayo, in our masquerades, in our festivals, from Cape to Cairo, African life is theatre and the theatrical. Every week
Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, plays to a full house. So also is the National theatre, Iganmu, Lagos.
A lot of African heroes, past and present, are products of the theatre: Herbert Ogunde, Baba Sala, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o,
Mbongeni Ngema, Wole Soyinka and a host of others. We are theatre-going people. We love the good life. We should have
filled Abbey Theatre to the brim, but we didn’t.
Still our near-total-absence at the opening night did not distract The Playboy of the
Western World
from being a great success. Co-written by our own Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle, and featuring Olu Jacobs,
one of the important names in African theatre and film industry, The Playboy of the Western World is the story of Christopher
Malomo, a Nigerian, who stumbles into Flaherty’s West Dublin pub and claims that he is on the run having killed his father
with a cudgel buried inside his skull. The boldness of his act and his manner of telling it fascinate the townspeople. Mr.
Flaherty offers him an accommodation in his pub. Pegeen Mike, Flaherty’s daughter, falls in love with him, Widow Quin tries
to seduce him, all the young girls lusting for him. Christopher has become a folk hero overnight.
Unfortunately, Christopher had not killed his father; he had only wounded him. Christopher’s
father, Malomo,
| "African people love the theatre. In the hustle and bustle of Lagos, in the
intemperate Bulawayo, in our masquerades, in our festivals, from Cape to Cairo, African life is theatre and the theatrical...
A lot of African heroes, past and present, are products of the theatre: Herbert Ogunde, Baba Sala, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o,
Mbongeni Ngema, Wole Soyinka and a host of others." |
(Played by Olu Jacobs) arrives at the pub and the respect and admiration heaped on Christopher by the
townspeople turn to scorn. In their eyes (and hearts) Christy is now a liar and a coward. In order to regain his pride
and the love of Pegeen, Christopher attacks and kills his father a second time. The people have witnessed the act of
murder and by implication are accessory to this heinous crime. Now his supposedly bold act is seen as treacherous. They
bind him in preparatory to hanging him, but again, for the second time, Christopher has not killed his father; he has only
wounded him. Malomo re-appears in time to save Christopher from being hanged. Father and Son finally reconciled, and hand
in hand they leave to wander the world telling their stories.
Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s The Playboy of the Western World is an adaptation of J.M.
Syinge’s classic with the same title and storyline. But that is as far as the similarity goes because within the play’s
aesthetic core Adigun and Doyle find their own voice. Unlike Synge’s The Playboy that borders on the
humanity of the Old Irish, Adigun and Doyle’s The Playboy explicates the foibles of the New Irish, with its stereotypes:
Christopher, the central character, is a Nigerian running away from persecution, and in the eyes of an unwary audience
he is an Asylum seeker. Sean, Pegeen’s lover, offers Christopher a suit, a shoe and a ticket to London through a familiar
exit route: Belfast, so that he can have his love back. And Sean’s grief for the loss of Pegeen’s love is even made worse
by the fact that Christopher, in the words of Sean, “is a Nigerian,” inferring stereotypically, with loads of baggage.
But the strength and beauty of Adigun and Doyle’s The Playboy is the way it challenges these
stereotypes. Abel Ugba, lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London, who flew
into Dublin that evening to watch the play, supports this assertion when he says, “At the beginning of the play I was afraid
that it could be filled with stereotypes, but as the play progressed, my fears disappeared. The play threw up stereotypes,
but it also challenged them.”
This is how Adigun and Doyle challenge these stereotypes. Christopher knows the Belfast route,
but he spurns Sean’s offer because of his love for Pegeen.
He is adept at weaving stories and would have done well before the
Immigration Officers at “Justice”, but Christopher chooses to submit himself and his passport to Pegeen Mike, and settles for
a life sleeping on the floor of Flaherty’s pub. Christopher is not a liar or a hoaxer, he is a young man genuinely on the run;
a fugitive not an Asylum seeker. This point is made clear in the final scene of the play when he agrees to go back to Nigeria
with his father. Every inch his father’s son, but no longer lurking in his shadows. It is a mark of Adigun and Doyle’s genius
that they did not allow stereotypes to over-burden The Playboy, which would have pulled it down.
At the debut of J.M. Synge’s The Playboy at the Abbey Theatre on 26 January 1907 it
played to a “riotous house.” (Adrian Frazier,
| "In our world there is no room for God, but gods: Ogun, Qamata, Oboshi,
Khonshu, Sango, Nyame and many others. And the power to punish or forgive is in the hands of these gods. When African gods are
adequately appeased they are capable of forgiveness, but when they choose to punish, African gods punish vicariously." |
“Not Standing in Their Shifts Only Made the Trouble”.) And in a letter to
Molly Allgood (who starred as Pegeen Mike) the following day, Synge had reacted thus: “It is better to have the row we had
last night, than to have your play fizzling out in half-hearted applause.” But Adigun and Doyle’s The Playboy did not
draw any anger on its debut night; nor did it “fizzle out in half-hearted applause.” It played out in the atmosphere of
laughter and rose to a standing ovation.
This is how Celia Otubu, a solicitor and a co-partner of Ceemex & Co. Solicitors,
summed it up: “The entire performance was spellbinding, exciting, sensational, amazing and inspirational. The standing
ovation was spectacular. The entire night made me proud of being an African and a Nigerian.” The real beauty of The
Playboy of the Western World is that art is not sacrificed on the altar of propaganda.
In spite of this, Adigun and Doyle’s The Playboy of the Western World has a critical
flaw, which is the lack of its redemptive power. Unlike Synge’s The Playboy, which is a comedy with tragic elements, Adigun
and Doyle’s The Playboy is a tragedy with comic elements. It is an African play and embedded within its aesthetic make-up is
the African Worldview. In the imagination of the African people there is no place for a son to kill his father, lest the
son who kills his father and glorifies in it. Such patricidal act, as Christopher has attempted twice (number doesn’t
count here, anyway), requires severe punishment, though allowance is made for redemption.
In our world there is no room for God, but gods: Ogun, Qamata, Oboshi, Khonshu, Sango,
Nyame etc. And the power to punish or forgive is in the hands of these gods. When African gods are adequately appeased
they are capable of forgiveness, but when they choose to punish, African gods punish vicariously: one man’s sin has been
known to put the lives of an entire community in danger.
Christopher must have to appease the gods in order to redeem
himself, his family and his community. It is not enough for his father to say, “I forgive.” It is also not enough for
Adigun and Doyle to wish his crime away. So until Adigun and Doyle set Christopher towards that path of redemption, and
he redeems himself, he is under a curse that is of tragic consequence to him and to our world.
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