‘You Can Never Tell’: Cluttered stage robbed play of its magic

If there is a chair on the stage and a person in a wig sits on it and reads out a sentence, you will believe that this person is a judge in his courtroom.

And if the person exits and two people in white coats walk in immediately discussing the health of a patient, you will not question how this very space has transformed itself from a courtroom into a hospital in a matter of seconds. This is because once you take your seat in a theatre auditorium, you consciously or unconsciously slip into what is known in theatre circles as suspension of disbelief.

I rather hoped that theatre directors in Nairobi would have more faith in the audience’s suspended disbelief, when I watched Strathmore University Drama Society’s production of You Can Never Tell (1897) by Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw on Friday, September 9.

Though I am now well acquainted with Dramsoc’s use of stage space, this time, the play was staged in the Strathmore auditorium where the lighting is not suited to theatre productions but rather to lectures and other forms of public speaking.

Thus, it did not allow for Led light off on the sets that were not in use. Also, the arrangement resulted in too much clutter and the cast being limited to a very small part of the stage at any given time, which was a shame as the stage is very large. This led to awkward movement around furniture, which greatly compromised the actors’ performance.

This insistence on realism — that there must be a dentist’s surgery that looks as much like a dentist’s surgery as resources can allow, and a dining room and a hotel room suite and a window overlooking the seaside, all at the same time, robs the stage of its magic.

And after all that, the play lacked the attention to detail that realism demands, though it wasn’t clear if this was due to negligence on the part of the director, Nick Muthama or the stage manager, Paula Bosire. The dining table — in an upmarket hotel — was set with an uncharacteristic mix of goblets and wine glasses, Mrs Chande did not sit facing the table squarely and primly in a manner that reflects her social class, ginger beer came in a Smirnoff bottle, scotch was served in mugs, and the audience even succumbed to unsolicited mirth when water was poured out of a green plastic jug.

Mrs Chande and her children Gloria (Nicole Dusenge), Dolly and Philip have returned to Kenya, having lived in South Africa for 18 years. Dolly and Philip finally meet their estranged father Cosmas at the dentist’s surgery and invite him to lunch without knowing who he really is.