The Clinic could not be less clinical. In Dipo Baruwa-Etti’s tremendously enjoyable new play, the word is applied to a rumbustiously opinionated, middle-class, British-Nigerian household. The action begins on the 60th birthday of Segun, the father of the family. Segun is a therapist, entertainingly played with a nimble self-importance by Maynard Eziashi, who churns out lucrative self-help books. His wife, Tiwa, is played by Donna Berlin, who wonderfully mixes complacency with an oppressed air. She is a dispenser of legendarily stimulating tea, a wannabe therapist herself, and about to be supplied with a patient: Wunmi, a young mother who, after her husband’s death, feels suicidal and is offered shelter. “We have influence,” Tiwa swanks privately. “Between us, we’re like a clinic.”
It is Ore, Tiwa’s daughter and a junior doctor, who has brought Wumni into her mother’s life (she worked at the hospital where Wumni’s husband died, a victim of institutional racism). She is excellently played by Gloria Obianyo with a rebellious grace that cannot conceal her default conformity. Ore is at odds with her policeman brother, Bayo (a lively Simon Manyonda), and his wife, Amina (conflicted Mercy Ojelade), a Labour MP. But it is Wumni who will prove the wildest card in the pack, an activist scandalised to discover herself among Tory voters. She is played with oscillating power – bashful and bold – by Toyin Ayedun-Alase.
