Play explores how hard times can drive people crazy

The Friends Ensemble’s latest production For Better or For Wife! is a highly polished dramatic comedy but it is unfortunate that it was staged one weekend only.

This is a problem all theatre companies that stage plays at Alliance Francaise face.

But it is more unfortunate with Friends Ensemble’s recent show since it is rare nowadays to see plays that link economics and mental illness so effectively.

Mel (Joe Kinyua) has just lost his job. Before he can disclose this to his wife Edna (Doreen Mwajuma), anxiety and stress transform him into a paranoid.

To address the family’s economic crisis and also pay bills for Mel’s psychiatric treatment, Edna goes back to work.

This stresses Mel even more since he is an old-fashioned kind of person who cannot easily accept the idea that his wife has become the breadwinner and head of the family.

Edna eventually loses her job. This makes her lose her grip on reality as well.

She descends into the same stressful state as her spouse, shouting at strangers and neighbours as her fears turn into rage.

Before her sanity slips, Edna calls Mel’s four siblings (Derrick Amunga, Ray Mwihaki, Carol Tharau and Priscah Nyakenya) for aid.

Fulfil his dream

They hold a classic family ‘powwow’ and try to figure out how they can help their younger brother.

The relatives do not know what exactly to do. Edna then suggests they give cash to help him fulfil his dream of starting a holiday camp for children.

The beauty of For Better or For Wife! which may seem more fanciful than real, is seeing two people support one another during tough financial times.

Rather than allow bad economic circumstances split their marriage, Edna and Mel stick together. When he falls down, she stands by his side, and vice versa.

When she breaks down over the sudden bankruptcy of her boss, he regains his composure and proves he is still the man she can count on.

The cameo appearance of Derrick Amunga as Mel’s elder brother with a life-long grudge against Mel, the family “favourite”, is a serious interlude that must have struck a chord among many a family member who have gone through similar experiences, either being the most favoured in the home, even when acting like the family bad boy, or being the one who is taken for granted and unappreciated.

There are several anomalies in the Friends Ensemble’s script, which was undoubtedly adapted and localised by the group from some Western source.

The most glaring one is about the two often mentioned little daughters of Edna and Mel whom we never see.

One cannot help wondering why, after Mel loses his job, for instance, we do not see him hang out with his girls at least once.

Otherwise, Friends Ensemble’s For Better or For Wife! is a finely-tuned emotional comedy of the kind that Nairobi audiences seem to love.

What I found most appealing about the production, which was directed by Samson Psenjen and Peter Kawa, was seeing how easily actors like Joe Kinyua and Doreen Mwajuma could gracefully descend into emotional breakdowns and emerge from that situation.

Their apparent emergence was a sweet resolution of the story, although Mel’s conduct in the last few moments of the play suggests he had not really changed.

On the contrary, he and his wife still seem to be secretly harbouring that same obsessive grudge that got Mel into trouble in the first place, the one big difference being that the couple are now united in their desire for revenge against their neighbour.