The ongoing production of JP Clark’s play, Wives’ Revolt, directed by Agozie Ugwu continues today at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, Lagos, in two shows at 3pm and 6pm. The production, which opened last Sunday at the same venue, features Seun Kentebe, Anne Njemanze, Patrick Diabuah and Cheeka Okeke, all of them actors who know their craft.
It begins with the character of Okoro, Koko’s husband, striking the gong and announcing the enforcement of a new law banishing goats in the oil-rich Erhuwaren village.
That law sparks a feud in the community between the men and the women, as the latter are the owners of these forbidden domestic animals. Considered as repressive by the women, the law comes after one which has the sharing formula for the oil wealth in three parts: one for the elders, men of particular age group, and women. The women reason that the men are the elders, and the implication is that the men folk hold the two-thirds of the oil revenue.
Hence, the women plan to make men their “domestic animals”. In their bid to be heard, they desert their homes and their children, leaving their husbands to do the domestic chores such as cooking, sweeping and other menial tasks that the men would otherwise treat as masculine abomination. The women travel through Otughieven, Eijophe, or Igherekan, Imode to Eyara while expecting to be quickly recalled by their lonely husbands. But their husbands are prepared for the worse. At Eyara, the women are accommodated and cared for by Ighodayen, a notorious prostitute.
When the men receive the agonising news of their wives’ sojourn, they plead for their return without any inkling that the worst is yet to come. The women return with deadly souvenirs, having been infected by Ighodayen. They became the subjects of ridicule of their husbands who have been brought to their knees to revoke the new law.
