Our Husband has Gone Mad Again

If you do just one thing this week get down to New Cross where you can see the fantastic play Our Husband has Gone Mad Again at Georgewood Theatre, Goldsmiths College, Lewisham Way, New Cross, SE14 6NW.  Directed by Lookman Sanusi this comedy originally by Ola Rotimi features a retired Major Rahman Lekoja-Brown who having left the Army for his fathers cocoa business has decided to enter politics, however his assault upon the Nigerian polity, described as Surprise and Attack, is shaken by the surprise arrival of his American wife Lisa.

This of course disrupts life with his first wife Mama Rasheeda and positively confounds things with his second wife Sikiratu.

Needless to say things do not go well when Lisa arrives, mistaking Sikiratu for a housemaid and Mama Rasheeda for a washerwoman and then rapidly goes downhill for the good Major as his 3 wives actually bond  and Lisa introduces Sikiratu to pretty dresses and women’s rights and advises Mama Rasheeda on advanced business planning!

It obviously doesn’t help the Lekoja-Brown’s political career when a rather determined attempt to prevent members of his party and the press from seeing his new American wife in a bikini during a press conference ends up with the Major armed with a rifle and his guests on the floor!

As Sikiratu takes her new found political awareness back to her mother (the head of the market womens union), Lisa gets fed up and the ever faithful Mama Rasheeda becomes an ardent capitalist, things do not look good for the Major.

This is a hilarious take on African life that is as relevant now as it was when it was originally written in 1966, covering so many themes from womens rights, tradition vs modernity, politics and gender relations it is a humorous answer to the question of who really runs the household or the world for that matter. I’ll let each person come up with their own answers to that but this is a great play that just had everyone in the fairly mixed audience with a fair smattering of non Africans literally rolling in the aisles (apologies again to the lady in front of me who I kept hitting as I shook with laughter!!) about put every Nigerian and African out of action for alot of the play not just from the dialogue but the familiar mannerisms and the characters we could all identify with, the loyal to a fault househelp, the excitable young girl, misogynistic patriarch, the uneducated but powerfully cunning market woman, posturing politicians and so on.

This play has a criminally short run ending on Thursday 20^th December, hopefully it will return in the New Year as it is way too good to see only once.

Tickets are only £10.00, with performances at 7.30pm every evening till Thursday. You can buy tickets on the door or in advance from here.