SETTING THE STAGE FOR AN
EXTRAORDINARY CYCLE OF SHOWS
How appropriate! I thought, as I stood in the August Wilson Lobby of the Huntington Theatre last night. I was about to see Sojourners, the first in the nine-play Ufot Family Cycle that celebrates multiple generations of a Nigerian and Nigerian-American family. Playwright Mfoniso Udofia was inspired by Wilson in a number of ways: as a student at Wellesley College, she saw Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean at the Huntington. “I still remember sitting in that audience and being blown away by the representation of Black life and spirituality on stage.” She remembers meeting Wilson after the play, thanks to her professor, and says she looks back on that moment “in awe” as significant to her future. Inspired by Wilson’s Century Cycle, which offers a depiction of Black American life for every decade of the 20th century, Udofia has created a nine-play series of plays to capture three generations of “the real-life complexity of the Nigerian-American experience.”
Abigail C. Onwunali, Asha Basha Duniani
Directed by Dawn M. Simmons (who brought delightful productions of K-I-S-S-I-N-G and Fat Ham to the Huntington), Sojourners is the first in an ambitious project to perform all nine of Udofia’s plays over the next two years at various venues in or near Boston. This first play lays the groundwork, introducing us to four fascinating characters. The center of the action is Abasiama, beautifully played by Abigail C. Onwunali. When the play opens on Jason Ardizzone-West’s set, an apartment in 1978 Houston, Texas, against a backdrop of abstract angles, we see a very pregnant Abasiama stroking her belly and crooning to her unborn baby. It’s not long before her irrepressibly charming husband Ukpong (Nomè SiDone) bursts into the scene. He is full of energy as he flirts and dances and jokes with his wife, recalling their youthful mutual attraction and the way their marriage was arranged by their respective fathers but declaring, again and again, that theirs is a love match!
Abigail C. Onwunali, Asha Basha Duniani
Both Ukpong and Abasiama are graduate students. Abasiama, in addition to being pregnant, studies biology and works in a gas station kiosk called Fiesta! selling snack foods and soft drinks to support the couple while Ukpong pursues his studies in economics. But all is not well in the home of Abasiama and Ukpong, love match or not.
Nomè SiDone, Abigail C. Onwunali
Ukpong is not progressing in his studies as Abasiama would like, and though it isn’t stated, we can see the tension increasing: they have a baby on the way. There are fights and reconciliations and fights again. In the meantime, Abasiama is developing a friendship with Moxie (brashly and humorously played by Asha Basha Duniani), a semi-literate prostitute who turns her pain into comedy. They are joined at the gas station one night by Disciple (Joshua Olumide), a writer and mystic who evokes the spiritual figures—some benign, others malevolent—of Wilson’s plays.
Asha Basha Duniani
The ticking clock of Abasiama’s pregnancy goes off as one would expect, but under circumstances that would have been hard to predict when the play opened. Udofia has laid the groundwork for the plays that will follow. She has given us a group of intriguing characters and we want to know what they will do next. In some ways, the shocking ending of this first play answers questions offered at the moment Abasiama first appeared on the stage, stroking her pregnant belly; in other ways, it leaves us with further questions about these characters and their futures, presumably to be answered in the subsequent plays.
Abigail C. Onwunali
I applaud Huntington artistic director Loretta Greco, who has a relationship of a decade with Udofia, for bringing this exciting and ambitious cycle to Boston-area theaters in collaboration with numerous other institutions, including GBH and the Boston Public Library, Central Square Theater and the Front Porch Arts Collective, and Boston Arts Academy in collaboration with Wheelock Family Theatre. These plays are sure to give audiences a deeper understanding not only of Nigerian-American experiences but those of other immigrant perspectives as well, something sorely needed in the present climate. Sojourners does not spoon-feed its audience. At times, the characters speak to one another in a Nigerian language; throughout, Abasiama, Ukpong, and Disciple speak with accents that were hard for me to understand at times. Like an unfamiliar Shakespeare play, however, or any play from an earlier era or another culture, what’s important is not the individual words, but the emotional power of the circumstances as conveyed by the actors. Onwunali, SiDone, and Olumide, along with Duniani with her Texas-inflected English, do that job superbly, but it is Onwunali who ultimately steals our hearts. She makes choices that will shock even as she earns our sympathy and curiosity about the path that lies ahead for her.
Joshua Olumide
photos by Marc J. Franklin
Sojourners
Huntington Theatre Company
The Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Avenue in Boston
2 hours 30 minutes with one intermission
Tues-Thurs at 7; Fri and Sat at 7:30; select Wed, Fri, Sat, and Sun at 2pm
days and times vary; see performance calendar
pop-up performances:
Hyde Park at Riverside Theatre Works, November 13;
Worcester MA at Prior Performing Arts Center, November 19;
East Boston at Zumix, November 22;
Roxbury at Roxbury Community College, November 25
ends on December 1, 2024
for tickets (starting at $29), call 617-266-0800 or visit Huntington