Here are the many lands over which I have ruled

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” goes the Shakespearean saying. I should know, for I have worn many crowns in my time. I have been President, twice a King and once Heir-apparent to an Emperor.

Since I still have my knocker on my shoulders, although I was once assassinated by a general lusting after my throne, I will take you down the magic road I have travelled through my realms. The ruses, plots and conspiracies are routine in the business, and someone is bound to get you, unless, like Queen Elizabeth I, you make them “shorter by a head” first.

Thoughts of my kingdoms suddenly leapt to my mind when I saw a notice in the Nation indicating that Alakie Mboya was directing a play at the French Cultural Centre in Nairobi. I had long lost touch with this inexhaustibly creative lady, and I often wondered where she was and what she was working at.

Ms Mboya, as Oting, was once my Queen when I was King Otong, ruler of Otongolia, in a play scripted by her and performed by a select band of us in Nairobi and Kisumu. We had lots of fun living and dealing in the “Pearl Kingdom”, which I suppose “Otongolia” suggests.

There were two peak points to our Otongolia show. One was the performance in Kisumu, appropriately at the Tom Mboya Labour College, an institution named after Alakie’s illustrious father.

TERRIBLE CRIME

Then, at the French Cultural Centre in Nairobi, we hosted Alakie’s mum, the late H.E. Pamela Mboya, who was Kenya’s Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies in Nairobi. 

Back to the play, as Otong, I was a rather henpecked King. Queen Oting, on the other hand, was utterly overbearing, practically taking over the running of the realm, through fortuitous “proclamations”, in cahoots with a few trusted aides. Our Oting, played with exceptional gusto by Alakie Mboya, was a version of the proverbially ambitious Lady Macbeth.

Speaking of Macbeth, (the “Scottish Play”, as they superstitiously call it in theatre circles), it was General Macbeth, who plunged several daggers into me when I was Duncan, King of Scotland.

It was a terrible crime because I was a guest at his castle, and I had just promoted him, making him Earl of Cawdor. But some weird witches had whispered to him that he would be King and he had mentioned this to his ambitious, overweening wife, Lady Macbeth.

She thought the shortest shortcut to the throne was to cut my life short and get her consort to ascend, and so it was. But their sacrilegious act haunts them throughout their brief reign, with the lady killing herself in a demented despair and Macbeth progressing from pathetic horror to total absurdity and despondency.

Just after the assassination he wonders if even all the waters of the ocean can wash away his crime but he has to admit it is his bloody hands that will paint the sea red.

At the end, just before he goes forth into his final and fatal fight, he concludes that “life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

I still remember the soulful power with which Lee Kanyare, as Macbeth, delivered these insightful lines in Wasambo Were’s production at the Donovan Maule Theatre. This was shortly before this legendary institution wound up and was replaced by the current Phoenix Theatre further down the street.

What I remember most vividly about this show, however, is a scary incident when Wanjiku Mwotia, as Lady Macbeth, nearly set her hair on fire! She was doing the “sleepwalking scene”, in which the demented Queen reveals her tortured mind, when a candle she was carrying singed the fringe of her hair.

Fortunately, there was “a method in Wanjiku’s madness”. She quickly rubbed the flame off her hair, held the candle farther back and went on with the act. The moral of the tale is that, wherever possible, live fires should be avoided onstage. But the superstitious would say the Scottish Play was just about visiting its curse on us.

My other regal roles were both in premières of Francis Imbuga’s plays. The earlier one, in 1978, was as Chief Jandi, a would-be successor to the Emperor of Masero. That was, of course, in The Successor, a script which Imbuga developed as a satire on the political intrigues that developed around our first President as his departure from this world became increasingly imminent.

SCHEMER IN CHIEF

Under the baton of the late John Ruganda, a star-spangled cast that included David Mulwa, Steve Mwenesi, the late Onyulo Sidede, Imbuga himself and the tragic prodigy of the late Stella Muka wove the tale of the Emperor’s naming of a successor to the throne. There were two moments in that show when I was in serious trouble of laughing out loud during very serious goings-on onstage.

The first was when David Mulwa, as Kaisia, Jandi’s adoptive father, put up a vigorous defence of me, his son, when I was accused of improper behaviour with the distinguished Lady Zera (Stella Muka). Mulwa’s dramatisation of an old man’s accent was so creative that I could hardly keep a straight face, although I faced capital punishment.

The second moment was when Francis Imbuga, as Chief Oriomra (is there a Maragolian “jigger” in the name), epitomised irredeemable embarrassment when he was exposed as the chief schemer behind all the shenanigans in the tale, including my intended downfall. I, however, ended up being named successor to the Emperor.

My later ruling appearance was in Man of Kafira, as Jere, the ex-soldier, ex-prisoner, who takes over as President after the overthrow of Boss at the end of Betrayal in the City. I remember Hawi Odingo, my meticulous director there, training me to “march” appropriately as a soldier-turned-president.

Incidentally, Alakie Mboya’s Otongolia was published by Oxford University Press in 1986, with a very youthful and very handsome Otong in full regalia on the cover. Can you guess who the model was?