Africa Through Borrowed Eyes
Things happen. Some good and some bad, but that’s life. For a Nigerian however, its “tings dey happen” and the obstacles they face are poles apart from what an average American might experience. What are these things? Just to mention a few: wars, murder, and corruption! Surrounding the oil issue in Nigeria, this play allows the audience to view a distorted society through a different pair of eyes.
Having an extensive list of characters and a wide variety of scene changes, “Tings Dey Happen” is a surprising one-man show. The actor, Dan Hoyle, is actually also the script’s writer. Who knew? With the play’s specific detail about Nigeria and its politics, you know someone did their homework. The changing accents within the different characters of the play, not only distinguish one person from another, but show the reality of the different tongues present in Africa. There are the Nembe Creek rebels, the Scott, the Nigerian ambassador, Serbian and Japanese diplomats, and the list goes on. Special effects are minimally used, only using light flickering and short sound recordings to bring the audience to Nigeria. They are quite crucial to the play, giving our ears and eyes, brief seconds to catch up.
Using the audience as a character in the play is a clever twist uncommon in most theater plays. The audience is Dan, the Fullbright scholar, traveling around and talking with people on all sides of this oil issue. Looking through these borrowed eyes, all of the characters are talking directly to the audience. Through the 90 minutes, these diversified roles passionately share personal views and stories, each personality shining through. Fortunately the occasional dialogue of Sylvanus, the stage director, serves as a comic relief and clarification of the past scenes. Hoyle demonstrates real talent. His mere transitions into each separate character are so smooth yet seemingly effortless. All his lines and accents clearly well-rehearsed, came without flaws. His credibility as an actor is not once questioned. He knows what he’s doing.
Now aside from all of Hoyle’s praise, the inescapable weakness was the performance itself as a whole. Its excessive length and its “TMI” (too much information) aspect are its greatest downfalls. To experience a one-man show for the first time may be the only reason to endure this performance. Within those 90 minutes, it is almost impossible to follow through its entirety and towards the end it is only sensible to give up even trying. As characters seem to blend, the audience loses any close personal connection to what’s going on. By no means is this a “sleeping pill” show, knocking the audience right to sleep. Yet its lack of change stands in the way, only clouding its true potential. In our hard-to-please society, no one wants to see the same person, the same background, and hear generally the same things again and again. Period.