Mmanwu: A decision on the future made with remarkable poetry
A widowed, single-parent poet moves in with her father, in Dagogo Hart’s excellent play
The New Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival
★★★★☆
Our own feelings, after we initially perceive and frighteningly experience them, are something that can be written. Psychologists say there is therapy in writing about past trauma, in how it creates a distance to approach our problems. One of the unlikely observers of this is Eze – the traditionalist father in playwright-director Dagogo Hart’s excellent play Mmanwu – whose daughter has returned to her Nigerian hometown from Lagos, as a heartbroken widow. “Do your relax-writing. It’s always good for you,” he says, with encouragement.
The anguish for Ada – a young poet and mother, played by a passionate Esther Ayo-James – is not just the immense responsibility of raising her six-month-old son alone, but also the agony of being incapable of giving him what he needs; she is racked with shame over her struggle to breastfeed. Compassionately, Hart gives her space to be both at home and to think about the future, bringing her back-and-forth between the African textiles of her father’s old-fashioned home, and a neighbourhood café attempting to be modern and open to new ideas.