(This review appeared in The East African 16th-22nd May 2016 under the title, Play Addresses Stereotypes and Power Play) “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”…
A Kenyan Nativity
(This review appeared in The East African 6th-12th December 2014) With Christmas increasingly becoming a secular affair, Steve Muturi’s Joy to the World, which premiered at Phoenix on 28th December does make an attempt to remind us that Jesus is the reason for the season. But much as theatre needs us to suspend our disbelief,…
Shakespeare’s Globe Tours the Globe
(A slightly edited version of this review appeared in The East African 7th-13th February 2015 under the title, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre come to EA) “All should beware of actors and newcomers, especially an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a players hide, supposes he is as well able…
China’s Cherry Orchard
(A slightly edited version of this review appeared in The East African 29th November-5th December 2014 under the title Anton Chekhov’s ‘Cherry Orchard’ Blossoms in China) “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress,” said Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), “when I get tired of one, I go to the other”. Chekhov’s words, I…
Telling a Story in Modern Kenya
(This review appeared in The EastAfrican 7th-14th July 2014) “The story is just the spoiled child of art,” said the Anglo-American writer and literary critic Henry James (1843-1916). Even though his contemporary, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), criticised him for “writing fiction as if it were a painful duty”, James still makes a good point. Telling a…
The Rise and Fall of a Woman’s Ambition
(This review appeared in The East African 24th-30th March 2014 under the title, The Rise and Fall of Melissa’s Ambition) Borrowed Life by Seth Busolo showed on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th March 2014 at the Michael Joseph Centre. Like many of Busolo’s plays, it portrays the everyday pre-occupations of young middle class families in…
Love By Shakespeare
(This review appeared in The East African 10th-16th March 2014 under the title ‘Hate’ in the Footsteps of ‘Love By Shakespeare’) For many people, if truth be told, Shakespeare has been the bane of many a gloomy English lesson. Not least because Elizabethan English, to the modern scholar, may sound tedious and complicated and speaking…
Lady Windermere Flirts Her Fan 122 Years Later
(This article appeared in The East African 3rd-9th March under the title Lady Windermere’s Fan, 122 years Later) My heart goes out to the Strathmore University drama society for making, as always, such tremendous effort to put on an Oscar Wilde play. Lady Windermere’s Fan opened for a run of six shows at Alliance Française…
The Phoenix Musical That Never Was
(This review appeared in The East African 28th December 2013 – 3rd January 2014 under the title The Musical That Never Was) “Let’s sing our way out of this” is a quote attributed to Mexican poet Isabel Fraire but I think these are the words that inspired Kenya at 50, Phoenix Player’s end-of-year musical, which…
The Eulogy of a Neat Man
(This review appeared in The East African 14th-20th December 2013 under the title Why must I have life if to live means to die?) “Everything has been figured out, except how to live,” said French writer Jean-Paul Sartre. This was the theme of The Eulogy of a Neat Man, a one-man play written and…
The Merry Wives of Our Windsor
(This review appeared in The East African 23rd-29th November 2013 under the title Hilarious Wanawake wa Heri) If ever there has been a first-rate example of theatricalism, then it is The Theatre Company’s production of Wanawake wa Heri wa Winsa. Translated into Kiswahili by Joshua Ogutu, this is not merely a translation but also an…
To Marie With Love
(This review appeared in The East African 16th-22nd November 2013 under the title Abortion, Birth Control and the Enjoyment of Sex) To Marie With Love, a one-woman play by Pauline Devaney opened at the Austin Room of Braeburn Theatre on Friday 8th November for a run of four shows. The play is about Marie Carmichael…
Theatre Critic 