The story begins inside a household of banana sellers in French Cameroon, with a daughter defying her father, but around them a far bigger political drama is gaining ground: that of the nation’s independence.
Sara (Selina Jones) has seen a group of women speaking about mobilising against colonial rule, and the vision has inspired her. Meanwhile, her father, Pa (Yinka Awoni) has arranged a profitable marriage for her, although she has promised herself to outsider Jean (Fode Simbo). We see her journey and that of the country entwined: Sara’s rebellion against her father, and the nation rising up against its French colonial occupiers.
Written by Clarisse Makundul and inspired by her grandmother’s generation, it is lyrically enacted, but not fleshed out enough, with the various stages in the fight towards independence in 1960 – from the founding of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon in 1948 to the creation of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women in 1952 and the nation’s multi-ethnic activism – too brief and indistinct.
Nonetheless, it is boldly directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye, with expressionistic interludes featuring song and movement that are beautiful in themselves, but sometimes render the story more opaque. A hilly mound forms Niall McKeever’s set, and it adds to the confusion as scenes change from the home to the street to prison cells.
Sara and Jean are pulled into political activism, and their personal story gives way to that of the nation’s rising violence, with news reports delivered via microphones or through characters who argue out political viewpoints in moments wedged into the domestic storyline.
It ends abruptly with Pa listing the crimes of the colonisers – concentration camps, torture, deportation and disappearance of family members. While they are horrifying , the ending leaves both the stories here – that of Sara, and that of Cameroonian independence – unfinished.
The production is stuffed full of stylistic invention and a uniformly strong cast, especially Jones, who gives an extraordinarily graceful performance. Amma-Afi Osei, as a confidant to Sara, has a lovely singing voice. The two actors have good chemistry, and there are some powerful father-daughter moments, too, which makes it all the more frustrating that the show does not come together as a whole.
