Brilliance meets perfection in ‘Maybe Tomorrow’

BY ONAOLATOMIRIN FALADE

For many denizens of the theatre, Terra Kulture has become the regular Sunday habitué where weekly entertainment of the­atre is inevitable. On the last Sunday in the month of Janu­ary, Eclectique Theatre, in con­junction with Terra Kulture, brought to the stage Maybe To­morrow, an intense play written by Soji Cole and directed by the quietly confident and artis­tic maestro, Ibukun Fasunhan, also the artistic director and producer of Eclectique The­atre.

Maybe Tomorrow ordinarily wouldn’t have been one of my favourites due to the limited dra­matis personae by the playwright. However, seeing it alive on stage and listening to the expertly craft­ed lines of the characters won me over.

When brilliance meets perfec­tion, it finds expression in spec­tacular display of legerdemain and adroitness. The play revolves around two long lost friends, who fought side by side during the Nigeria Civil War. One would expect that such a meeting will be a joyful reunion replete with reminiscences. It is only a little of that, and much more. The first hindrance to their joy is the fact their meeting takes place in a po­lice questioning facility where the two friends are on two different sides of the law.

Kenneth Uphopho, creative director at PAWS, plays the role of the chief interrogating officer, Adolphus Wariboko; while Pat­rick Diabuh, a leading stage ar­tiste in Nigeria, with an unrepen­tantly charming stage persona, plays the role of Kenule Ododo the suspect.

These two friends are similarly different in their thinking, and the audience is led on a give-and-take kind of theatre where the speech flow is rich and uninterrupted. The interrogation process not only reveals bits and pieces of the suspect’s character, but opens the interrogating officer to more scru­tiny.

Two comic police officers constantly burst into the inter­rogating room in the hope of getting some information and proving they are part of the inter­rogatory process. The two man­age to create some sort of comic relief for the otherwise serious dramatization.

The play touches on the sensi­tive topic of patriotism, corrup­tion, extra-judicial killings, kid­nappings, unlawful and underage enlistment in guerilla camps and nationhood politics that eat deep into the system of today’s Nige­ria. As the plot thickens, some ugly details of the merciless­ness of war are revealed, and we begin to wonder who truly is conducting the interrogation and who the interrogated is.

At the end of the day, it is re­vealed that Kenule Ododo really knows nothing of the kidnapping of some expatriates who went missing. It, however, does not prove his total innocence in all issues; just for the one he was apprehended for. This reveals a huge chasm in the nation’s law enforcement system.

Maybe Tomorrow speaks of Nigeria’s hazardous past, the dicey present and an almost unrealistic future. No one truly knows tomorrow, but everyone hopes for a better tomorrow. Indeed, better times will come: Maybe Tomorrow.

 

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