At his wife’s funeral, his disgruntled daughter and devoted mistress meet for the first time.
This is Man Needs Therapy, a family drama play written by Dr Fred Mbogo, staged on April 5 at the Osnet Creative Centre in Eldoret. It is a riveting production by Eldoret-based 64 Theatre and directed by Octavious Onyango.
A 61-year-old Martin Mbombo (Oyatsi Simon) has been having young mistresses since his wife, Dorothy Mbombo, has been in a seven-year coma at a care home. He has been living with his current young lover, Sunshine Mumbe (Moureen Kinyati), in the house that his 34-year-old daughter, Winnie (Constance Neema), grew up in. Dorothy then dies; Winnie visits.
He holds no grief for Dorothy, as she had barred him from building a relationship with his daughter and dismissed his work as an artist. His greatest fear as they head to the funeral is whether Sunshine and Winnie will get along.
“Attending his wife’s funeral does not stir much within him. It feels like just another ritual that marks the final burial of a marriage,” says Oyatsi.
Sunshine demystifies the opportunist stereotype, and we see her as a misunderstood, independent young woman in love with an older man.
Kinyati describes her as a complex optimist. As she walks to the funeral, guilt grips her, but she is also prepared to defend her love for Martin.
“This funeral means that she finally gets to bury the ghost of Dorothy, who has been tormenting her relationship with Martin,” Kinyati says.
This is challenged when Sunshine realises that she is an outsider; her father and daughter have memories that she can never be part of. But is it really? She further notices that she helps them bring out the pain that they have been hiding since Dorothy went into a coma.
Winnie has a bittersweet relationship with him because of the life he chose after her mother became comatose, turning her into a cold-hearted child.
In being in a relationship with Sunshine, she feels that her father has someone else over her. She is protective of the house for the familial memories they hold, and she is hurt that she feels alone.
“Disgusted and angered by sunshine, it’s like both her parents are being taken away from her, and she can’t do anything,” Neema says of her character.
She is fearful of the fact that her father refused to get therapy and ended up in Sunshine’s arms. But there’s also a plot twist: Sunshine, who initially thought that Martin couldn’t let her go, feels that, as the conflict escalates, he is siding more with Winnie than with her.
This play exposes the conflict between the moral obligation to honour the past and the need to live in the present, and highlights family traumas that come from that.
Producer Cosmas Bii says that they wanted to stage the play in May last year, but it was a challenge getting a venue. Now, they have been developing their own venue, Osnet Creative Centre, which will stage community productions.