Wonder of wonders. He crosschecked against his list p my name was nowhere to be found. However, my friend who I had invited to tag along as my "plus one", was boldly inscribed on the list. We laughingly signed in as "her plus one", and I jokingly told her that if they were catching people, na her name dey for paper as evidence, not mine.
Past the security and we were directed towards the small ante room where the Arojah Royal Theatre was doing a final rehearsal of their command performance of Sofia Freden's #HandInHand for the Swedish Embassy in Nigeria.
Arojah was staging this play as part of it's "Cultural Diplomacy Production", through which it strove to encourage theatre without borders, adapting plays from different cultures and perspectives to suit the Nigerian narrative.
We were quite early, 45 minutes to be precise, and so just hung around and got a few drinks while the stage was set up and the lights were dimmed.
Hand in hand follows the story of Nina, a free spirited Swedish lady who was given a flat by a much older man, Garry. Since he handed her the flat "no strings attached", she had moved in with her boyfriend Alan and lived there for a year. Suddenly, Garry called out of the blues to announce he would like to come visit Nina in the apartment.
In desperation, Nina threw her boyfriend Alan out. As she tried to make ready for Garry's visit, an admirer came calling. Aaron, the admirer, had lost his house to a fire and needed a place to stay.
Nina welcomed him in and while she struggled with the decision to let him stay, Alan returned and attempted to throw Aaron out. This move forced Nina to take a decision. Aaron would stay, they would both stay.
Confused? Don't be... yet!
A knock on the door brought in Peter, Aaron's brother who also needed a place to stay. Nina let him in too and left briefly to sort out a few things.
Her neighbour Nadia comes into her house, sees Aaron and convinces him to fall in love with her. Peter, Aaron's brother comes into the room and it turns out Nadia was the girl he had met in the hotel the previous night, fallen in love with, and given his brother's money too.
Just as the tension in the love quadrangle (or menage a quinze) was beginning to build up, Garry comes in and turns out to be Aaron's father.
Alan orders everyone out of the house and as he tries to hit Garry with an iron rod, misses and hits Nina instead. That knock on the head snapped her out of her apparent confusion since the first curtains opened, and she took a decision to remain with Alan.
Phew.
A satire about the Swedish society yes, but easily transposable to the Nigerian society. How indecisive we seem to be in terms of what we want and how we hope to achieve it and how we keep throwing all sorts of incompatible variables into the mix.
Reaching all sorts of deals and making all sorts of compromises in search of an ideal that might have been sitting right beside us from the onset. Perhaps we all need a collective knock on the head to jolt us out of our confusion.
Perhaps!
The actors did justice to the plot with Longret Dalong as Nina, bringing the character to light in such a convincing manner that the audience lived the whirlwind of emotions she portrayed in the short space of about 70 minutes the play lasted.
Costume and make up was perfectly executed and helped to bring out the different scenes, mannerisms and characteristics of the different actors.
I whispered to my friend who asked once why the lights were dim at a point, that lighting in stage plays are an integral part of the story. They assist the characters portray their moods and emotions and help to bring the storyline to live for the audience.
Perhaps because the ante room that was used for the play was a bit small, as the creative director of the Arojah Royal Theatre, Omo'Oba Jerry Adesewo jokingly called it - it was a parlour performance - there were one or two points were there was a slack in the use of lighting, but of course that would only be visible to the trained eyes.
Overall, it was an excellent performance and like the Swedish Ambassador, Mr Svante Kilander mentioned in his opening remark, hopefully as the play begins its tours and showings, it can challenge people to think and draw parallels to the society they currently live in, and foster a deeper union between Nigeria and Sweden.
If you would like to catch a rerun of the stage play, it would be showing at the Ladi Kwali Conference Hall of the Sheraton Hotel and Towers Abuja today the 31st of October 2015, at 3.00pm.
The gate fee is a modest N1,000 only.
Pictures from the stage below...
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