Chief Adeyemi and his wife Toyin were once the brightest of their generation. Now it is 1989, and the Chief is wheeling and dealing to keep his contracts with Nigeria's military rulers. His discontented wife is facing her 40th birthday, and taking out her feelings on the house girl Helen, a young woman with ambitions of her own. With everyone looking for the main chance in a Lagos where everyone is on the make, the pressure cooker that is the Adeyemi family home reaches explosion point as the birthday dawns.
A prequel to his previous hit, The Estate, Oladipo Agboluaje's Nigerian comedy requires no previous knowledge, just a willingness to go with the flow. Is Iyà-Ilé a great play? Probably not - it's too cursory in its characterisations and crammed like an overfilled pie, but it provides an exuberant, warts-and-all account of Nigerian life. As an experience it rates highly, not least because of the engagement of the black members of the audience, who treat each character as if they know them personally.
By the end I felt as if I did too, although the first 15 minutes are bewildering for anyone unversed in Nigerian life. It is, I imagine, the theatrical equivalent of stepping off a plane in Lagos: slightly overwhelming and culturally dislocating, but fascinating. It's a soap opera on an operatic scale, doing for unhappy Nigerian families what August: Osage County did for unhappy Americans. Femi Elufowoju's production has real verve, and the cast give it everything they've got. It's neither subtle nor deep, but terrific fun.
