African women dominate Arcola double-bill
Daniel Nelson
African women dominate the double-bill at the Arcola’s outdoor theatre, and Nigerian and South African men don’t cover themselves in glory in either play.
Here’s What She Said to Me is the saga of three generations of Yoruba women, from pre-independence Ibadan to near contemporary Britain. They straddle countries, struggle against traditional choices and switch confidently between cultures and countries.
Migration is a factor but it’s not a problem to be angsted over and discussed: it’s a shifting backdrop, like scenery in a film, in front of which the women live out their lives. They have a strong sense of self and of their values: you feel that even if they ended up in Reykjavik or Ushuaia they would remain Yoruba women immersed in their families, undisturbed by their alien surroundings.
Family relationships are at the heart of it – between the women and between the women and their boyfriends and husbands. The women’s relationships tend to be profound, complex, loving, frustrated, passionate. They men to whom they are drawn have lovely smiles but are self-centred, unreliable and prone to making bad choices in life.
The women in this family are tough. They talk back, challenge, kick men out, walk out, work hard, will do anything to improve their children’s life chances. Their menfolk are less adaptable to family circumstances — after all, they are the beneficiaries of patriarchy.
The piece is essentially a storyteller’s yarn in which key moments, which include child rape, death, marriage, childbirth and stillbirth, are dramatised by the small cast, using a handful of props – a trilby, for example, signifying that its wearer has become a man.
It’s effective, though its impact is slightly reduced by hard wooden benches on a chilly evening in the Arcola’s outdoor theatre: take a cushion if your body is bony. The play is best suited to an intimate setting.
And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses is a shorter, lighter two-hander, a conversation between two women, a prostitute — sorry, courtesan – and a domestic worker, wile they wait, Godot style, to buy cheap rice.
Written in 1988 it wittily and occasionally movingly teases out differing attitudes to life, politics and dealing with bureaucracy in post-apartheid South Africa., though it’s not got quite enough heft to have real bite.
Both plays are presented by the Utopia Theatre company, aimed at “demonstrating the rich cultural heritage of Africa’s theatre canon, and in so doing, dispel stereotypes and encourage authentic voices from the African Diaspora”. They certainly do.
* And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses and Here’s What She Said to Me are both showing at the Arcola Theatre, Ashwin Street, E8, until 2 October. Info: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/ You can pay to see one or both. If the latter, you can watch them on the same or different nights.