Early in March at the Kenya National Theatre, Nairobians were treated to a limited-run revival of the Kenyan classic Betrayal in the City by award-winning director Stuart Nash. Written by renowned playwright Francis Imbuga, Betrayal in the City is quite familiar because many of us studied this text in high school. I didn’t. Still, it is quite familiar because now, having experienced the play, it really is just Hamlet set in Kenya, sprinkled in with the reliable trope of twentieth-century African pseudo-activism. Break the ice, Churchill; I enjoyed the play. I thought it was fine for, like, vaudeville, but the text itself left a lot to be desired.
I attended the very last performance of this on 12 March at about 6:30 in the evening. There was a woman I was planning on seeing this with who had been promised a complimentary ticket, but when we both arrived, the promisor was nowhere to be found. After nearly fifty years since its publication, betrayal was, indeed, still in the city. An added advantage to this show was that it marked the grand return of the legendary actor Raymond Ofula to the stage after twenty-five years. He was playing Boss, the President of an early Kenyan republic, beset by student riots complaining about lack of involvement in the country planning committee, à la the French student protests of ’68. First, I will address the text, since this is my first interaction with it and virgin eyes are best, then I will discuss the production I witnessed of it.
I found Francis Imbuga’s play to be tediously long (as performed) and astonishingly trite. With the respect bestowed upon this ‘classic’, I was honestly waiting to be blown away, but instead, for three hours, yes sirs and ladies, I said three hours, we were subjected to dollar-store Hamlet. It’s undeniable – the character of Jusper (played by Francis Ouma Faiz) is beat for beat the Prince of Denmark—mercurial, highly intellectual, wild, murderous, and passionate. In both Hamlet and Betrayal in the City, there is a play within a play in which this cunning figure dupes a head of state. Also, both plays begin with the death of someone very important to Hamlet and Jusper, which drives the events of the narrative. I find it unwise for a writer to do anything that can be compared to a work by the Great Bard because it will only show how untalented, no matter how talented that writer is.
The only thing classic about Betrayal in The City is its use as an example of this. Hamlet as a character is the intellectual’s intellectual. A character whose interiority is so vast any gender or colour could play it, simply the human at its best. We pick all this up from the character’s words, the mode of his thinking, his shifting of dialects and affectations throughout the play to suit the scene, and his almost omnipresence within and outside the play. Four hundred years later, he continues to elude and fascinate us. Hamlet is only a genius because he was written by a genius, by a man who thought faster and better than anybody else ever has in the English language.
When it comes to Betrayal in the City’s Jusper, his unpredictable nature shines most in his character. Imbuga must have thought that being a wildcard who utters vague, abstract statements creates an enigma, but within the first fifteen minutes, I could tell that there wasn’t much behind Jusper worth deciphering. His insanity could actually be real, as opposed to Hamlet’s, which, while still a debate, I remain firm was all a pose. The play within a play is the denouement in Betrayal in the City, while in Hamlet, it is used to ramp up the action for the final murderous act.
The performances from the cast were powerful, no doubt. If the script lacks anything, it certainly isn’t an assortment of good roles. Ouma was brilliant as Jusper. Ofula was positively frightening and hate-filled as Boss. Joan Wambui played Regina, the only woman largely featured in the play, and she was a rolling ball of energy while doing it. Screenwriter and actor Martin Kigondu played Mosese, a jailed lecturer, with such feeling and vitality. He yells at a new inmate after telling his story and being offered remorse, “Sorry? Don’t tell me sorry! I don’t need your pity!” which may have been the single most powerful scene in the play. Later, after they have finally usurped Boss by use of Jusper’s clever little ploy of staging a fake play, the Boss skirts away and tells Mosese, “I’m sorry,” to which the disgraced lecturer does not react.
Call me old-fashioned, but generally, I think old plays ought to be preserved as they were originally written and performed as such. I find it sacrilegious to ad-lib or change the characters’ words, even if in an attempt to modernise it, especially so. It might just be the writer in me, but I winced a little bit every time the characters made a modern reference or spoke about wheelbarrows (despite the director insisting the play has nothing to do with the current political climate). A play should be staged in its own words and on its own terms and time. Towards the end of the play, I could hear a woman who sat next to me mumble to herself, “Stop talking, just finish!” It went on for too long, over three hours, and it only seems to cover half of Hamlet in terms of plot. In terms of literary revelation, it can’t even begin to compete. I enjoyed the performances of the play, up until I wondered whether this story had an ending or not. The content did not justify the length.
But I must be wrong in my judgments. Perhaps I am being too harsh by comparing it to its influence. It has, after all, survived almost fifty years. The test of time has spoken, and history will be its advocate, though history and the men who write it, the canon and the people who gate-keep it, have been known to get things wrong. This play is so vital to our people; I certainly hope it is I who is mistaken in this case, and Betrayal in the City does indeed have some higher merit than I think it does. After the show, Stuart Nash and company announced they’re working on a stage version of Nairobi Half Life next. He has been quoted on some outlets as saying Sarafina will be next. Only time will tell.
