The students in their hundreds litter the Wole Soyinka Theatre, University of Ibadan. Lawal Sunday, a recent graduate from the Faculty of Law, was one of my newfound friends during my one-day stay at the University. In a conversation that stretched to twenty minutes, he told me about the day one staging of Cheta Igbokwe’s newly published ‘Homecoming’, which was held a day earlier.
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Lawal, who happens to be a fan of the stage play director, Waheed S. Olamilekan, raved about his exquisite talent and attention to detail. The time is 5:45, the students are majorly talking about last night’s staging, hoping for a more superb closer for the night.
Inside the theatre, the crew is all on hand to paint the set property for an herbalist scene in the play. The place of timeliness comes into play as they hurriedly paint and take the movable set-prop to the end of the theatre. The stage gets arranged quickly to form a middle-class sitting room. Chairs, books, tables, etc, are all visible.
Waheed S. Olamilekan directed the play close to a year after the book was published by Noirledge Publishers, Ibadan. It’s also the third time it will be staged. The play was first performed at The Arts Theatre of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka on May 6, 7, and 8, 2021. It was directed by Ugochukwu Ugwu, produced by Leo Ugwuanyi, and designed by Richard Umezinwa. Another performance took place on August 7, 2021, at the Enugu Sport Club, Enugu State.
On ‘Homecoming’, Cheta examined the place of grief, trauma, and the quest of a parent’s search for their kid. Four main characters serve as instrumental in detailing these themes. The play crisscrosses between a sitting room and an herbalist.
Atilola Samuel Omotehinse, a Ph.D. student at the University of Ibadan, played the role of Nwakibe, a retired teacher, a former traditionalist turned church Catechist. Goodluck Ihuoma Akinlawon played the role of Adanaya, she also serves as Nwakibe’s wife. Akinyele Babatunde is known as Johnson in this play. He’s the writer while the diviner is Sebastine Alexander who goes by the name Ahumaraeze. Orolabi Productions produced the play, and Obadina Abiodun Emmanuel served as the stage manager.
The play begins a few minutes before seven with the chorister humming ‘Holy holy holy.’ Some men dressed in cassocks walk in procession to Nwakibe’s living room. The play comes to life in a scene that features Nwakibe and his wife. She read a letter from her son whom she claims is studying at Oxford University. All efforts by her husband to dissuade her from reading the letter proved abortive. The next scene finds her husband tied. The lack of support from Adanaya’s husband infuriated her. The appearance of their new tenant, Mr. Johnson didn’t help matters, while she looked forward to moral support from Mr Johnson, more questions were asked, and no answer was provided by Adanaya.
The play makes use of flashbacks as Nwakibe tells the writer about the event leading to the disappearance of their son. The place of fate and faith comes to place, while Christianity seems not to give him hope, the herbalist keeps reassuring Nwakibe of the eventual return of his son. Nwakibe was caught between going to the herbalist and getting ostracized from the Christian folk or going to the herbalist and getting the reassurance he eagerly seeks.
While he thinks he might have found a sympathizer in Mr. Johnson, the reverse is the case as Mr. Johnson seems bent on actualising his dream of becoming an author. He documented their stories and even urged Nwakibe to revisit the herbalist. Nwakibe, a traditionalist, was ashamed to go back to the shrine. His newfound love for Christianity might have been shallow, but going back doesn’t seem like the right step. After some thought, he visited the herbalist who assured him of his son’s return. Nwakibe never believed in him. A challenge was thrown at him to get ahead. He beheaded Johnson, took the head to the herbalist, and discovered he was his long-lost son, Nwakibe could not face the shame and died later on.
In less than two hours, Waheed S. Olamilekan succinctly encapsulates the message of the playwright. His close to a decade’s wealth of experience in the artistic world seems to show more in this play. Topics like grief, mental health, and the conflict between transitional religion and Christianity are brushed. While the religious aspect is deliberately downplayed, it is difficult to ignore.
Adanaya might have exhibited some insane traits, but she seems to be the most logical in the play. “What a smart man’s woman…” Johnson confirms. She knew her son was alive and perhaps around her, the husband on the other hand seems not to belong to this school of thought. How do people manage grief, can you dictate how people grieve? These and many questions come to mind at the end of the play. Adanaya writes to herself, pretending her son was the one writing the letter; this seems like a way of giving herself hope, while everyone thought she might be going haywire, she insisted she knew what she was doing, but sadly, no one believed her, not even her husband.
What’s life, what’s faith, what’s fate, and at what point does fate affect one’s faith? These and other existentialist questions come into play as the play Homecoming unravels before the audience, leaving them with the free will to decide what their answers are through the mirror before them: the lives of Nwakibe, his wife, and their long-lost son.
At just 27 years old, Cheta Igbokwe is slowly making his name known in the Nigerian artistic world, with “Homecoming”, he surely set things in the right perspective by giving the fans a fine play that would stand the test of time.
Listed twice by ‘Black Pride Magazine’ as one of the top 5 Music Journalists in Nigeria, Emmanuel Daraloye has over 600 album reviews in his archive.
