Not many people will agree with Emeritus Professor Femi Osofisan on the tragic resolution of Altine’s Wrath. In fact, many would criticise the renowned playwright for merely allowing Lawal Jatau (Charles Morgan) to loose his life’s savings to his wife, Altine Jatau (Korede Oladapo); he ought to also face prosecution and possible jail term for his corrupt acts. But instead, his wife dies for no fault of hers, but as a result of the husband’s sins against the innocent people he’d cheated.

But that is also life; it doesn’t ever go in a straight trajectory. It has its ugly twists and turns that often leave everyone baffled. It is how the wicked continue to go scot-free everyday leaving the innocent to suffer for no just cause. Indeed, Altine’s Wrath spells the grim determinism that often rules the affairs of men and women.

In a way, too, Osofisan is right that Altine should also suffer. As the wife of a corrupt government official, there’s nothing wrong in her blowing the whistle on her husband’s corrupt practices. Instead, she bids her time and takes advantage of her husband’s cover-up tactics by using her thumbed signature to seize his stolen wealth. A receiver of stolen goods is also a thief, as the saying goes. Altine is implicated in Lawal Jatau’s criminal practice by virtue of cornering its proceeds to herself, as payback for maltreating her.

Theirs was an arranged marriage by their parents when they were young. They fulfilled it when they came of age, but Altine, because she lost her parents early, didn’t make it to school. This fuels disdain for her from her senior civil servant husband; it grows into violent abuse. Unable to bear it anymore, she chooses inscrutable silence that her husband mistakes for sudden dumbness. Illiterate and dumb, Lawal Jatau sees his wife as the perfect conduct for the illegal wealth that he uses his position to acquire. He creates a new bank account that only her can access with her thump signature so as to erase any trace of his corrupt acquisition back to him.

Lawal Jatau has a smashing girlfriend, Mariam (Owumi Ugbeye), who desperately wants Altine out of the house so Lawal Jatau can marry her. But he is reluctant; Altine holds the key to his stolen wealth which Mariam doesn’t know. As Lawal Jatau charms his way through, he gets an old schoolmate Dr. Aina Jibo (Bunmi Sogade) as visitor. She has come to plead that Lawal Jatau uses his position to return the land government seized from some peasant farmers. Lawal Jatau is furious; he was instrumental to the seizure and he benefited immensely from the act. He finds it unthinkable that Aina Jibo should plead on behalf of some societal vermin to return what the government has taken.

The farmers come prepared; they know that Lwal Jatau is their problem and that he would not yield. So, they bring him banana, ostensibly poisoned. When Lawal Jatau chases them out, they offer the banana to his wife; she loves banana to a fault. She starts wolfing them down immediately.

And when Alhaji Maikudi visits so Lawal Jatau can append his signature to a new deal that would illegally enrich him, he calls in his wife, Altine, to thumb sign for him as usual. This is when Altine takes her revenge for her husband’s brutal abuse on her. She tears the documents to shreds. Not done, she starts to speak again to her husband and Alhaji Maikudi’s dismay at the loss of their criminal deal. She reveals the logic behind her dumbness and how she educated herself secretly – it is to spite her husband for physically abusing her. She also reveals how she now owns all the money in his accounts to which she has her thumb prints. Lawal Jatau is aghast just when Alhaji Maikudi started admiring his friend’s ingenuity at concealment.

Indeed, the performance is a sub-set of a TV talk show whose guest narrates how she got an award for helping some farmers get back their lands government had seized. Sizzling dance performances spiced up the show to the audience’s delight. While Altine is poisoned by the bananas the farmers intend for her husband, Lawal Jatau escapes the barb although he goes away empty-handed without the proceeds from his many corrupt acts as a senior government official.

A humanist, Osofisan’s Altine Wrath also shows him as a feminist, a man who is sensitive to the many abuses women go through. As he put it, “There are all kinds of women in my plays. We have women playing heroic roles in society, but they are hardly acknowledged. There are women all over the place doing things, but they re silent, marginalised.

Osofisan confessed to ending his plays problematically as a way of stimulating discussions among readers and audiences alike. Altine’s Wrath is one such play. According to Osofisan, “My plays sometimes end badly because I want to provoke conversation, over the years, directors have pleaded with me to change some of the endings, but I always refuse”.

But the first class academic said he is open to innovative performance and craftsmanship gifted actors bring into role interpretation, adding, “I’m open to all interpretations, and you could get something more than you intended. Actors can bring in something to enrich a performance to enhance the interpretation. I’m always wiling to accept innovations from actors, but some actors can also wreck a play. Enlightened, gifted actors bring something in the play the playwright didn’t think about. I want the actors, from time to time, to bring in something new”.

It was staged at the Arts Theatre, Department of Theatre Arts, as part of Osofisan’s 70th birthday celebration held at University of Ibadan two weeks ago. He admitted to featuring women in his work as his way of redressing their marginalised status in society. Hard-hitting Lawal Jatau where it hurt most by seizing all his illegal wealth is just desert for a corrupt class of elite whose acts continue to cripple development.

Altine’s Wrath was produced by the Ayodele Jaiyesimi-led Thespian Family Theatre, with directorial assistance from Mr. Nisi George.