Cheaters always want you to be loyal while they remain unfaithful. On the weekend of 15 – 17 July, Nairobians were handed an unexpected manual, How to Have an Affair: A Cheater’s Guide. This stage play featured Nice Githinji as Kendi, and Charles J. Ouda as Harun and was directed by Nyokabi Macharia. On the surface, the piece is a two-hander about Kendi, a married career woman who is trying to juggle many life’ curveballs including a demanding corporate career, three daughters, a social life, and a boring husband. On the other hand, Harun is a married corporate official with an insatiable appetite for women, better referred to as a conniving, serial cheater. As the story progresses, the dire consequences of infidelity are unraveled by witty and funny text and subtext through the character’s conversations, actions, movements and voiced intentions. Something that glues this performance is the fact that you could feel the actors completely immersed themselves in the story. Githinji and Ouda give their audience an unexpected side of them by getting to the truths of their characters Kendi and Harun and living by them.
Although How to Have an Affair is an adapted work, the director and the actors flesh it out successfully, centering it on the middle-class Nairobian lifestyle. As an audience sitting in the auditorium, you could forget everything else but remember the adrenaline-filled, sex on steroids scene where Harun and Kendi get raunchy and make passionate love in a hotel room. Just when the two love-thirsty souls start shedding their clothes, the director’s voice rumbles through the air, forewarning the audience of this PG-rated scene. Nyokabi informs us that she has to fast-forward this scene, otherwise all perversion demons in the abyss will be awakened if she lets the scene proceed in its normal pace. What follows is a fast-forwarded coitus presented in form of shadow theatre. We in the auditorium are only able to see giant shadows exchanging soulful pleasures passionately. By the time this scene is done and the actors are revealed, tired from the horse race, there are deafening chants, ululations, and hails to the “power couple”.
The set designer, Muthoni Gitau also stretched her creativity beyond the normative limits. Muthoni was able to design three worlds within the relatively small stage at Kenya National Theatre’s Ukumbi Mdogo . What worked perfectly was the choice of designing the bed against the wall, at the backstage centre. Muthoni chose the minimalism idea and still achieved the intended purpose of the bed. The fact that the bed is in the centre of the stage symbolises that it is the focal point at which two troubled individuals find solace in their attempts to escape from the storms of their lives. However, there was a need to think through all the set design elements, like other furniture and props. Before choosing to have certain props on stage, there is a need to ask the question of whether they are complimenting the narrative or they are just space fillers? For instance, the fridge in Harun’s house and the bookshelf that doubles as the cupboard were just lying there, and at no point do we see Harun even yank a bottle of whiskey or sauvignon from the fridge, given his luxurious life and love for fine liquor. Moreover, instead of Harun and Kendi miming holding glasses of liquor and wine, it would be better to just provide them with the actual glasses or goblets. The only scene where miming of props worked out is in the last scene where Kendi and Harun meet at a coffee shop several months after their painful breakup. The actors are consistent with how they hold their coffee cups while catching up after a long period.
As an actor, Ouda captures Harun’s vulnerability to the core. Like getting emotional and crying the moment he discovers that in his quest to find pleasure and fulfilment externally by having multiple extra-marital affairs, he ends up empty and loses everything, including his beloved wife, Linda. However, almost none of the audience members sympathise or empathise with Harun and just stare at him in disbelief. Githinji gives an exceptional performance portraying a nuanced woman with whom a lot of those sitting in the audience could relate and empathise with. Her pacing, however, could have been better. There are several bits of Kendi’s life that would have resonated more had the actor given the audience little moments to breathe and digest the complexities of her life.
About costume design, the designer upheld consistency of colour, dominantly choosing black for the characters across the entire story. The contrast that the colour black presents in this story is subtle but intriguing. On the surface, Harun and Kendi exude charm, hard work, and beauty but beneath this façade, these very personable characters are overshadowed by infidelity. Furthermore, the lighting design worked appropriately for the story. It is through the lighting that we see clear demarcations of Harun and Kendi’s separate houses and other places that they visit for their escapades. Lighting helped the director present the love-making scene through shadow theatre.
The sound design was also minimalistic, and when necessary, the sound accompanied some scenes and it helped advance the narrative, especially the soundtracks and music.
Finally, the ending of the story could have been better. A strong beginning, and exhilarating middle deserves a quite powerful and memorable ending, but How to Have An Affair ends in a less gripping way. Kendi receives a phone call from her husband David who is waiting for her in the next hotel where they are attending a conference. And although she has declined Harun’s offer of rekindling their romance by confidently saying that her marriage is now stable and that she is happy, she asks David over the phone to give her one more hour, evident that she is still ready to give Harun, the serial cheat, a hundredth chance. Indeed, “Infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.”
