There is a quiet boldness in choosing to begin a play not with thunder, but with an act of commerce. And yet, in Olamigoke Omowale Okelola’s Ashes of Promise, it is not a transaction that opens the drama — it is a transmission. A queen buys a necklace from a bead-seller, but what is truly exchanged is memory, loss, and encoded feminine resistance. It is in this understated way that the play unfolds: not as spectacle, but as excavation.

Performed in two sold-out runs on Friday, June 6, at Lagos Theatre Igando, Ashes of Promise marks Okelola’s first foray into original playwriting after prior work directing canonical Nigerian texts. Those familiar with his previous interpretations of The Gods Are Not to Blame and The Lion and the Jewel may arrive expecting ornate spectacle or folkloric revivalism. What they encounter instead is something far more distilled: a morality tale braided with sociopolitical undercurrents and personal myth.

The play centres on Abéfé, a dignified vendor of traditional beads whose quiet authority anchors the narrative. Her encounter with Queen Adérónkẹ́ in Act 1 is staged with a delicacy that belies the weight of their dialogue. It is not merely a conversation — it is a coded meditation on womanhood, aging, and the cost of forgetting.

When Abéfé remarks, “Even ashes remember the flame,” the line lands with both cultural specificity and universal ache. It becomes the play’s thesis—one that Okelola will test, unravel, and reassemble through scenes of domestic betrayal, spiritual transgression, and intergenerational reckoning.

As a director, Okelola demonstrates remarkable control over spatial rhythm. His blocking is not decorative—it is ritualistic. Characters move with intention, often orbiting one another before lines are exchanged, creating a palpable sense of psychological choreography.

In Act 2, the household scene between Abéfé’s maidservants, Tánná and Olúyẹmí, is staged in crescent arcs, the two women sweeping and circling the sacred gourd before the inevitable accident occurs. The broken gourd becomes a rupture not only of trust, but of cosmic order, and the tension that follows—both silent and screamed—is unrelenting.

The performances here are uniformly strong, though it is the two younger women who most surprise. Tánná’s impulsiveness is never played cheaply; the actress delivers her lines with a balance of humour and desperation. Olúyẹmí, meanwhile, is drawn with more ambiguity — less a villain than a reflection of a system that rewards cunning over confession. Their final act, restringing beads together in quiet redemption, may be predictable, but is nonetheless earned.

One of Okelola’s most successful choices lies in his use of sound—or rather, its restraint. Where many productions might lean into drumming or underscore to signal emotional shifts, Ashes of Promise allows silence to throb in between lines.

This is most evident in Act 3, when Abéfé discovers the broken gourd. The ensuing confrontation unfolds not in melodrama, but with controlled fury. Her Yoruba exclamations are left untranslated, but the emotion is unmistakable. It’s a moment where language becomes less important than rhythm and intonation—an effect that could have been indulgent, but under Okelola’s direction becomes resonant.

The design elements are likewise minimal but thoughtful. Set pieces are few: a shrine, a stall, a mat, a royal drape. But their positioning and transitions between scenes are sleek, often occurring in half-light with characters themselves moving props—a gesture that reinforces the play’s thematic interest in self-determination. Costume design deserves brief mention too: Abéfé’s coral beads are not simply decorative—they become symbolic punctuation in multiple scenes, a visual language unto themselves.

And yet, Ashes of Promise is not without flaw. The penultimate scene, in which Abéfé presents a metaphor-laden strand of beads to Queen Adérónkẹ́, borders on didactic. It spells out what the audience has likely already gleaned. The line “Sometimes, the cracks are where the light enters” is beautiful, yes—but also editorial. The production might trust its viewers a bit more to make those connections.

Still, as a debut original work, this play signals a turning point for Okelola. What emerges most clearly is his thematic confidence. He is not merely interested in telling a story, but in investigating the architecture of legacy —how it is preserved, disrupted, or reinterpreted across women, time, and memory. It is also refreshing to see a male playwright place women at the centre without fetishising or flattening them.

What Ashes of Promise proves —more than any line of dialogue or turn of plot—is that the fire of storytelling lies not in what blazes, but in what smoulders long after the curtain falls. And Okelola, still early in his artistic trajectory, has found the spark worth tending.