The Grove

Play (2016)
by Mfoniso Udofia
Ufot Family Cycle, #2/9
Directed by Awoye Timpo
Huntington Theatre Company
Boston Center for the Arts
South End, Boston
February 7 – March 9, 2025

Scenic Designer: Jason Ardizzone-West, Costume Designer: Sarita Fellows, Lighting Designer: Reza Behjat, Voice and Dialect Coach: Dawn-Elin Fraser, Language Consultant: Emmanuel Sylvester

With Abigail C. Onwunali (Adiaha Ufot), Patrice Johnson Chevannes (Abasiama Ufot), Joshua Olumide (Disciple Ufot), Valyn Lyric Turner (Kimberley Gaines), Amani Kojo (Ekong Ufot), Paul-Robert Pryce (Udosen Udoh), Aisha Wura Akorede (Toyoima Ufot), Godwin Inyang (Maduka Steady), Shadows: Patrice Jean-Baptiste, Ekemini Ekpo, Janelle Grace, Dayenne CB Walters, Chibuba Bloom Osuala

In the first installment of this nine play series being done in Boston this season, Sojourners, Abasiama (Abigail C. Onwunali) is a young married and pregnant Nigerian woman with an irresponsible husband who meets up by chance with Disciple Ufot (Joshua Olumide) who helps her in a great moment of need – as her water breaks and she prepares to give birth. One presumes, at the end of that play, that they will be together in the future.

Indeed it is so. In The Grove, the second installment of the Ufot Family Cycle, Abasiama (Patrice Johnson Chevannes) has married Disciple Ufot (Joshua Olumide) and they have three young adult children, Adiaha (Abigail C. Onwunali), Toyoima (Aisha Wura Akorede) and Ekong (Amani Kojo). The eldest of the three, Adiaha, is the child who is born at the end of Sojourners.

Here, in The Grove, Adiaha (played by Abigail C. Onwunali, who plays Adiaha’s mother, Abasiama in Sojourners) has just received a degree from a graduate writing program and is being celebrated at her parents’ house in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2009. Clearly, she is uncomfortable there, but, at first, it is not entirely clear why. Her father, Disciple Ufot (Joshua Olumide, who realized the role in Sojourners as well), who in Sojourners seems like such a responsible and nice guy – who comes readily to Abasiama’s aid in her time of need – here seems less like a compassionate soul and much more like a stalwart and inflexible Bible thumper. It is exactly that rigidity and self-righteousness which put Adiaha off and make her feel that any attempt to be more open about who she is with her parents is destined to fail.

Adiaha’s sister, Toyoima, challenges her for not spending more time with the family and makes it clear that she knows what’s up – that Adiaha is gay and has a lover. None of this is going to be acceptable to Disciple Ufot, who, with extended family members and friends Udosen Udoh (Paul-Robert Pryce) and Maduka Steady (Godwin Inyang), throws the force of his judgmental weight around in displaying his religious fervor and expressing his rigid social viewpoints.

We come to see Adiaha at her own home with her lover Kimberly (Valyn Lyric Turner), a young painter, and witness an argument between them about household issues which then ascends to more serious expressions of concern about their relationship. But it is clear they love one another, though Adiaha has not come to terms with herself about being in a domestic and romantic partnership with another woman to the point that she has been able to reveal it to her family.

Inevitably, the family does find out about Adiaha’s involvement with Kim and it is very difficult for them. But Adiaha, through a process of accessing her African past – exhibited through a series of characters here identified as Shadows – she comes to terms with who she is and, in a significant opening up to herself and to her family, steps towards realizing her goals both as a writer and as a person.

This play certainly brings up the important issue of coming to terms with one’s own sexual preferences and learning to share them with one’s family, however resistant one’s family may be and however fearful one is of challenging them. Clearly, Adiaha is in enormous pain over what her father believes and puts over on her. He calls her constantly in the middle of the night to have her pray at one of the appointed early-morning times and his whole authoritative and holier-than-thou stance drives her crazy. Coming to terms with herself via the process of writing and accessing underlying energies – here represented by the so-called Shadows – gives her strength to begin to confront herself and her father.

Interestingly, Abasiama, who, in Sojourners, seems like an independent woman, here seems a curious hybrid – at once, at times, more thoughtful and sensitive towards Adiaha’s state of mind and situation in life, and, at other times, oddly out of sync with this sympathetic aspect of her character. Somewhat inconsistently, she becomes what seems a stalwart defender of Disciple’s position regarding Adiaha’s homosexuality.

There is a considerable amount of emotional pendulum-swinging and explosive teeth-gnashing between Adiaha and Kimberly, who hover between expressions of deep connection and reactive abandonment, but one ultimately gets the sense of a committed relationship that is fraught by Adiaha’s inability to face herself and her parents.

The set by Jason Ardizzone-West is rather elaborate with a revolving stage that displays Adiaha’s and Kim’s dwelling in alternation with the living room and a bedroom at the Ufot family home to accommodate scenes which switch quite frequently. Though the design is quite ingenious and effective, the constant switching of scenes can be a bit dizzying.

The Shadows – a bunch of women in African dress – mostly hover in the background during the play, giving the sense of Adiaha’s subliminal process of realizing her own psychological truth through coming to terms with her African past. In the final scenes, the Shadows do emerge and give a sense of the exotic and colorful costume design done effectively by Sarita Fellows.

Though the presence of the Shadows is suggestive of important subliminal inspirations which Adiaha is beginning to access through her writing, the correlated implications are not entirely clear. In one sense this deeper African energy might be seen as a curative to Disciple Ufot’s colonialist-induced devotion to Christianity. On the other, it might be an encouragement for Adiaha to come to terms with her deeper self, which here includes an acknowledgment of her sexual preferences. Perhaps both implications are relevant, but since the Shadows play such a dominant role in the narrative, it would be nice to have a somewhat clearer sense of how they help Adiaha realize and come to terms with herself.

There is a lot of Nigerian spoken in this production, and it is beautiful to listen to. Apparently one can get a running translation on one’s phone by dialing in to a particular site while being very careful to turn off all the sound on one’s phone. I didn’t do all that, but I much enjoyed listening to all the Nigerian language, and though I got the tone and the emotional gist, I understood none of it. Kudos to the actors who carried it forth, and to voice and dialect coach Dawn-Elin Fraser for supervising this aspect of the production.

Looking forward to seeing how the story develops in the succeeding parts of the Ufot Family Cycle, appearing soon on Boston area stages!

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)