Book review: Futility
of War
By HENRY AKUBUIRO
Sunday, February 10, 2008
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Photo:
Sun News Publishing
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Concept Publications, Lagos, Nigeria, 2007, pp. 64
Dr. Chris Anyokwu’s play, A Parade of Madmen, underlines
the wittiness of the assertion: “Drama … creates
a world modeled on our own: its essence is imitative action.
But drama is not imitative in the ordinary sense of the word.
It does not offer us a literal copy of reality, for the myth
of drama does not depend upon reproducing the world exactly
as it is. Drama is true to life by being false to our conventional
notions of reality” (Elements of Literature ed. Robert
Scholes, 2003: 789).
A Parade of Madmen bears fictional witness to unmitigated
disaster occasioned by man. The timeline is contemporaneous
with the armed insurrections in Africa and elsewhere that
tend to not only balkanize humanity but jeopardize its existence.
It is not the writer’s overriding preoccupation to emphasize
or on the minutiae shafts of war, but by deploying lurid and
plangent dictum, as evident in choric commentaries, as well
as occasional destructive manifestations, the playwright guides
A Parade of Madmen to a dramatic virtuosity that invites pathos.
Besides exploring the thematic axis of the futility of war,
the playwright propels the notion of paternal paradox vis-à-vis
paternal love for children, making a mockery of filial expectations.
Instead of using the single mode of tragedy, the playwright
approximates the frailty of human existence by using tragicomedy,
which not only satirizes war but brings a humorous tinge to
the fatal debacle.
Verbal sophistication defines Anyokwu’s writerly obsession
and, in A Parade of Madmen, it teems but not floridly. Evident,
also, are the Sophoclean dramatic matrix of choric representations
and the Rotimistic play-within-play enactments.
Anyokwu’s characters are workaday archetypes. They include
a poor couple, Mr. Alentov and Shyle, his wife; their sons,
Seysey and Osaso; and other stereotypical representations
in Messenger, Storyteller, Soldiers and Teachers. Among them
are characters who occupy conflicting borderlines in the sense
that they either represent the powerful or the powerless,
the haves or the have-nots, the aggressors or the casualties.
These dualities are congruent with the thematic exigency of
war that underscores this imaginative construct.
Anyokwu’s characters are a group of intriguing personae.
They, through their monologues and dialogues, take the reader
through different turns as they strive to survive the harrowing
effects of the war. The survivalist approach of the Alentovs
in the play is to steer clear of any involvement in it while
relying on crumbs to stay alive. The tenacity of man to survive
under harsh realities is put to test by this, and the wavering
of Mr. Alentov when it matters most, by electing to kill his
son, Banse, as a last resort for the family’s survival,
raises a question mark on his parental responsibility, yet
it smacks of the fragility of existence.
The aforementioned attempt has another significance, especially
viewed from its allegorical parallel with the attempt to sacrifice
Isaac by his father, Abraham, in the Bible. But, while the
latter has a redeeming promise, at least biblically, the former
foretokens distaste.
The plot of the play offers a prologue, multiple scenes and
an epilogue, and the playwright is not concerned with symmetry,
which allows him to advance thematic synthesis. The universality
of the setting is manifested in the locations of the work:
in the city and the rural neighbourhood. The prologue is set
in a “modern city with skyscraper and ultramodern structures”,
but it is in flames and brimming with confusion. By locating
the play, also, in a village, it is a pointer to the fact
that nowhere is totally safe.
Since drama is a representational art, the fibre of Anyokwu’s
dramaturgy would be best appreciated on stage than in its
textual form. The stage directions, for instance, allow for
high-level verisimilitude in setting with the inclusion of
offbeat props.
Worthy of note, too, is the deft monologues of the Storyteller,
which commands attention with his heartrending narration and
chilling evocations of brutal spectacles. The fusion of narratives
and thespian dramatization, grand in presentation, adds gem
to A Parade of Madmen.
The plot itself is strewn with the bizarre and the hilarious.
Central to it is the trials of the Alentovs: “When the
city became too hot for comfort, promising nothing but disaster
and death, Alentov, who was a schoolteacher in the city, and
Shyley, a trader, took their two sons and fled their country
on foot to a faraway land.
Their first son, Shyley, was in the warfront killing and waiting
to be killed; a schoolboy forcibly dragged in to the war.
They took his pen from him and put a gun in his hands…
To kill his countrymen and women, to kill his playmates. For
when at war, man becomes selfish, killing to have a foothold,
killing to breath … the beginning of the Alentov’s
family has begun. (p. 17)
For Anyokwu is preoccupied with telling a universal story,
it shows, also, in his choice of names, which cuts across
the world. While Alentov sounds like a Bulgarian name, Banse
is South African; Shyle is English while Osaso sounds like
a Bini name.
The return of Alentov’s son, Seysey, when the family
has given him up for dead, towards the end of the play, rekindles
hope for the embattled family. But this hope is eventually
dashed when the boy, having seen his late brother’s
grave, decides to go for revenge, against his parents’
counsel. He is killed in the war, sadly.
Let’s take a step backward before the endgame begins:
the echo of this play goes beyond the horizon. The Storyteller,
in the epilogue, leaves us to ponder on the conundrum: “What
do we gain from fighting one another?” (p. 63). |
