BY CHIKE OFILI, DRAMA

It took just a sneak preview of BUDISO by Barrister Fred Agbeyegbe at the celebration of Prof. Wole Soyinka at 77 in furtherance of the newly conceived Living Legend Series for septuagenarians who have impacted the practice of theatre as part of National Association of Theatre Practitioners NANTAP, Lagos led by the shining light of Mr. Mufu Onifade to compel me into a must see of the full play.

The compelling force was the mix of rib racking satire and alluring language; a rarity in Nigeria’s stages today. Decided upon it, it was no longer Onifade’s brief to make me come; it became mine to ensure it.

And I was happy I did against Nigeria Labour Congress’s hiccup of always doing no more than asking for more than they give with strike threats; and having to write the review now that our judiciary is dancing naked all by itself.

Directed by Mr. Segun Adefila, an avowed theatre practitioner against all odds – financial and infrastructural, this show which a friend would not attend for what he thought was the familiar Adefila style, was after all, not his trade mark social commentary enacted.

It was a different demand of having to work on a script not his, coupled with the huge demand of living up to a theatre icon’s expectation under the commissioning and burden of expectations of his professional association, NANTAP.

On grounds of capturing the comic spirit of the play to have the ribs of the audience rent in pieces, and having them go into peels and petals of laughter with sufficiently persuasive acting, Adefila made me much sorrier for my invitees who missed out.

Mrs. Ndubuisi Kanu who accompanied his chairman husband down was laughing herself out, and crying her eyes out in raucous delight that her white handkerchief permanently in her aid, must have caked into her pan caked face and screaming fair-skinned beauty.

She no doubt gave vent to her enjoyment beyond the manly and military holdbacks of her husband who came to see what his uniformed kind did to Nigeria in their miscalculated cleansing mission. But the social activist took it all with equanimity; reminding the audience not to let the farcical part of the period get the better of a great profession.

The details of this most factually farcical rendition of the military era with its markedly excessive know-how now escape me as the emanating fun absorbed and converted me completely into an audience, disengaging me from playing a reviewer; stopping my note-taking.

Rear Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, his wife and Fred Agbeyegbe at the command preformance of Budiso

Having never read BUDISO as a dramatic literature, I wasn’t sure whose genius was at play, the writer’s or the director’s. Curiosity led one to finding out where script fidelity gave way to directorial felicity; so to the book I turned. As I read, I read in pictures and playbacks of all I saw on stage.

It turned out a happy meeting of minds; the script’s loose or lack of directorial instructions had allowed the director his intelligent infusions and embellishments in dance types, imaginary prop application in human communication and movements.

But it was the acting that more than anything else, threw up the beauty of the play. How could one readily forget the memory engraving role of Muwuyon Ogun, playing the interpreter of the new decrees that forbid anyone from dying without military permission among the numerous ‘’budicrees” issued by fiat with her truly pregnant self, dragging frame and bulk to theatrical advantage as the audience held their hearts in their mouth.

Or Wale Macaulay’s well-cast and played role as Di – the General Tunde Idiagbon of the time. In BUDISO, he is the real overbearing personality of the regime; bullish and purposeful without fun or frivolity.

A drama performance by the Dream Playhouse Theatre company.

Philip Okolo, playing Bu – the General Mohammadu Buhari of the time appears more colourless and weaker than really was the case. The interpretation is as scribal and directorially misunderstood as it remains misread by Nigerians who refuse to see Buhari as the leader who allowed his subordinate, Idiagbon act and shine.

This is partly where the writer, Fred Agbeyegbe’s vision fell into the commonplace, missing the point on instructive leadership as he does in portraying a military class without one single redeeming character from them. This misperception if not a somewhat blurred understanding of things, has helped to harden Nigeria’s bad attitude to all things military.

The fact remains that there will always be found a good man in every land; however bedevilled. This point is often lost on combative thespian participants of the military era.

Sometimes the blinding effect is so strong that it even dispossesses the thespians – writers and directors of even their imagination in their get back bid. That’s why more often than not, we hear more angry words and over-heated verbiages than sublimations from a well-absorbed imagination.

A clear case in point is Prof. Wole Soyinka’s handling of the General Abacha’s regime in his play, King Baabu. If ever was a time i went to the theatre disappointed by this Nigerian hero of thought and theatre, it was his writing and directing of the play that was not at all his engaging self; not even his mastery of the metaphoric and symbolic came to play.

Too much overwhelming angst from embittered involvement also takes the shine off Esiaba Irobi’s Cemetery Road as literature in his writing of the military era in relation to the academia.

Yet at the humorous hand of another involved participant and combatant of the same era, we see Fred Agbeyegbe rescue himself with doses of laughing pills which he also administers to the understanding of the era without losing his craft or calling as a writer and thespian.

There was clarity of understanding of the era and what device to deploy to the public understanding of its ills and the need to laugh at its excesses and sometimes, buffooneries. And a good application of satire with all its constituent parts of farce, comedy and ribaldry were well-used to audience delight and indoctrination.

For me, this was the first time of encountering a successful engagement of the military era in any form of our literature without it sounding pamphleteering or propagandist.

BUDISO is a play written purposely to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the legal profession in Nigeria in the face of its assault by military zealots and decrees, and how it rises in defence of law as a major weapon that should be used in its defence against military abuse and every kind of assault.

Even by its own opportunistic members in their self-seeking pursuit of higher offices as is the case of Chief Bencher So whom we find ready and malleable for abuse when the right choice for the military’s promotion will not succumb to military intention to abuse the law and the land.

This demeaning behaviour of So who happens to be historically Sowemimo for the role he learnt himself to in the interpretative view of his colleague, combatant and writer of the play, BUDISO.

The play presents the judiciary as rising to be counted on the part of honour and totally uncompromising in cooperating with the military in the maladministration of the laws of the land. It also reveals the agonising difficulties of maladministrators within and outside the legal practice.

To be continued