Husband, Home & Away: Comedy sheds light on poverty and how hustlers stay alive

From left: Thespians Osoro, Nyaata and Mwakwa in Crony’s Husband, Home and Away at the National Theatre on June 24, 2023. FILE PHOTO | POOL

In Husband, Home and Away, Crony Players have finally taken seriously the need for more structure and a scripted storyline that doesn’t digress or zigzag to the point of losing sight of what the play is about.

Nick Kwach and Dennis Ndenga can be thanked for that.

The Players still delight in creating comedy that borders on the absurd, and which flips between the scripted and spontaneous.

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Those gifts are part of their charm. It worked well this past weekend at Kenya National Theatre when Victor Nyaata (as Cyrus) and Cyprian Osoro (as Philip) showed up as roommates in a single-room shack.

The entire action of the show transpires in this one room containing the bed, kitchen, toilet, and dining area.

The set design simulates a mabati room, much like what one will find in Mukuru Lunga Lunga or Majengo.

It’s also a clever contrast to Cyrus’s dream of moving in with his Kitisuru-based girlfriend who will stop by their abode that very day.

The ‘big lie

This comedy of the absurd reflects a clearcut sense of class and the dialectics that we will watch unfold as these two hungry characters reveal what poverty might look like for both guys are in debt everywhere.

They have the landlord (Jay Mwakwa) banging on their door. The local butcher (Nick Kwach) as well. And even the neighbourhood mama with her friendly kiosk has grown weary of giving them easy credit.

Neither guy seems to have the means to pay up on their debts, even as they are told the man who owns their house is soon to arrive, and eviction might be imminent.

Yet a surprising development ensues once Cyrus hears from his girlfriend Clare (Tasha Wanjiru) that she wants them to meet that very day.

He’s made up a ‘big lie’ about his background and the place where he stays, so he’s stuck having to direct her to come find him in the slum.

It’s at this stage that Cyrus starts revealing his secret stashes around the house. In them, he has been hoarding cash in bank notes, some of which he will have to use to buy Clare the burger she wants to order from a ‘take away’, and which he really can’t afford.

Philip also gets a call from his girlfriend Suzanne (Marya Okoth). It comes just before Clare arrives and eventually demands that she and Cyrus leave and go get something to eat on the other side of town.

She hasn’t yet figured out that her boyfriend is a fraud, a hustler who hopes to sweet talk his girl into her lifting up his social station and status in life.

Philip is as much of a hustler as his roommate. So it’s not as much of a surprise to find that he too has been stashing away treats for such a day as this one when Suzanne is also coming.

He who had been complaining of his penury shortly before this, now proves that he is not quite so badly off. He is able to pull out giant bags of salty fried munchies that Cyrus’s Clare clearly loves.

But once Suzanne arrives, vibrant, earthy, and alive to her partner’s electrified energy and dancing soul, we see the startling difference between the two women.

Clare is reserved and judgmental of Cyrus’s low-class venue while Suzanne, who is coming from Kayole, is at ease and enchanted by Philip’s energy, no matter where he comes from.

The scene is complicated once Philip and the girls depart briefly. That’s the time a heavy knocking at their front door leads Cyrus to assume the one knocking is a thief.

So, he opens the door, grabs the man turning out to be the landlord’s boss, Kissinger (Humphrey Maina) and proceeds to clobber him to what looks like near death.

Fortunately, the girlfriends return in time to save Kissinger. But only Suzanne shows her face. Clare quickly hides while Cyrus realises he’s beaten up the wrong man.

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Quickly shifting his hustle, he now claims to be Kissinger’s son.

At the sight of Suzanne, the old man makes a quick recovery, desirous of a side chick like Suzanne. He starts to make a deal with Victor but then shifts to Suzanne herself.

She pretends to play along as the puffed-up Kissinger prepares to climb into bed with her right there and then.

But that’s the moment the old man’s daughter, Clare emerges from behind the bed to rebuke her dad and kaboom! The story ends there.

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