New York Times
By Jesse Green
May 17, 2017
As seen onstage, the story of the arrival of blacks in America is almost always the story of slavery. Even immigrants who arrive willingly get here in despair, if not in chains, then in steerage. From Eugene O’Neill to August Wilson, “Fiddler on the Roof” to “In the Heights,” the newcomer’s drama is usually one of distress and deracination, and, most of all, the impossibility of ever going home.
That is not the immigration story Mfoniso Udofia tells in the extraordinary “Sojourners” and “Her Portmanteau,” two plays in a projected nine-part cycle about a family of Nigerians in the United States. Instead, Ms. Udofia gives us, in “Sojourners,” a heroine who leaves a relatively privileged life in Nigeria in the late 1970s to study biology at Texas Southern University. Like other members of her country’s “talented tenth,” Abasiama Ekpeyoung and her new husband, Ukpong, come to America not as immigrants but as temporary visitors, as the play’s title suggests. Once their studies are complete, they will immediately return “to refashion their country into a world power.”
It doesn’t happen that way, of course; when “Her Portmanteau” picks up Abasiama’s story 36 years later, she has long since settled in Massachusetts, and raised an American family. That doesn’t go as planned, either. Still, taken together, the two plays, which opened on Tuesday night at New York Theater Workshop in a pair of stunningly acted productions, offer a moving and powerful corrective to the notion that what immigrants leave behind is always awful, and that what they find is always worth the trip.
Other plays of the African diaspora have touched on these themes; Danai Gurira’s “Familiar,” for instance, concerns a family of Zimbabwean-American overachievers. But that sitcom of assimilation, set in Minneapolis, is far too bright for the portrait of America that Ms. Udofia is after. Certainly the upright, studious Abasiama (Chinasa Ogbuagu) is less than impressed with Houston. Not only does it lack the ingredients for making a proper Nigerian fufu (she is forced to substitute Bisquick for yam), but also the locals strike her as barely civilized.
The problem is not, refreshingly, racism; white characters are barely even mentioned in the plays. But that doesn’t mean that Abasiama is spared a view of injustice. In her graveyard-shift job as a cashier at a gas station, she meets a young prostitute called Moxie who is covered with welts from her violent johns. “People can do this?” Abasiama asks in horror. Even more confusing to a woman who speaks two languages perfectly is the discovery that Moxie can barely read.
That her husband is, at the same time, growing more enamored of America — the land of Smokey Robinson, Prince and free love — only confirms Abasiama’s determination that they finish their degrees and head home. Especially now that she is pregnant with their first child, it is imperative that they not forget why they came. But their marriage, which, though arranged, is not without love, pulls apart as their goals diverge. By the end of “Sojourners,” Abasiama must make a pair of terrible decisions. One is whether to stay with the feckless but irresistible Ukpong or to attach herself to another Nigerian student, Disciple Ufot, who is strange but responsible. The other is what to do, either way, with the baby.
The playwright, herself a first-generation Nigerian-American, makes the eventful plot run with marvelous ease; Abasiama’s troubles weave through each other at right angles so that they mimic the complexity and difficulty of real life. The contrasting of the two men is likewise deft, partly because of the excellent performances of the insanely charming Hubert Point-Du Jour as Ukpong, and the charmingly insane Chinaza Uche as Disciple. All four roles are rich and playable, and if Moxie is the most predictable creation — the sassy prostitute with a sad back story — she is also a heartbreaker in the hands of Lakisha Michelle May.
Ms. Ogbuagu is excruciatingly good as Abasiama, at the still center of the story; with all she holds within, her pregnancy is both literal and metaphorical. That achievement is even more notable if you are lucky enough to catch the two plays in one day. (The order doesn’t really matter.) In “Her Portmanteau,” set in 2014, when we meet the eldest of Abasiama’s American children, it takes quite a while to realize that this cheerful 30-year-old is also played by Ms. Ogbuagu. As Adiagha, she is almost totally unrecognizable, physically and in her Americanized speech patterns. (Dawn-Elin Fraser oversaw the terrific dialect work.)
All bubbly good will, Adiagha does not know what kind of day she’s setting in motion when she goes to the airport to pick up her half sister Iniabasi: the baby born at the end of “Sojourners.” Now 36, and a mother herself, Iniabasi (Adepero Oduye) has come from Nigeria for the first time — as Abasiama (now played by Jenny Jules) once did — with an imperfect idea of what America is, and how it will change her.
“Her Portmanteau,” named for the shabby red valise Iniabasi carries, but also suggesting the heavy load of grievance she bears, is a far more conventional work than “Sojourners”; it takes place almost entirely on a single set (Adiagha’s cozy Inwood apartment) over the course of a continuous 105 minutes. Arguments among various groupings of the three women alternate with revelations and plot changes delivered by cellphone. Adiagha, apparently explored elsewhere in the cycle, is somewhat underdeveloped here, and comes off as a device to bring Abasiama and Iniabasi together for their face-off.
Even so, “Her Portmanteau” is the more moving of the two plays, a paradox bound up in its very conventionality. If we have seen mothers and daughters attempt rapprochement before, we have never seen this mother and daughter do so, and never as played by Ms. Jules and the astonishing Ms. Oduye. Her Iniabasi is so furious and (like her mother in “Sojourners”) so bent on containment that you fear she will flood the play when she finally overspills. She does.
If “Sojourners,” which feels more modern, never quite reaches that lovely peak of melodrama, it is both funnier and more excitingly staged. The director, Ed Sylvanus Iskandar, who is essentially limited in “Her Portmanteau” to inserting little nonverbal jokes and plumping the sofa cushions, provides, in the rangier play, a more hauntingly cinematic spectacle. The main scenic elements, by Jason Sherwood, include a dramatically tilted ceiling, sometimes collaged with images, and a turntable that helps heighten the tension of a story that otherwise takes plenty of time to get going.
But patience is a virtue of both “Sojourners” and “Her Portmanteau” — as it will have to be for theatergoers eager to see what Ms. Udofia does next with this family. Though five of the plays planned for the cycle have been written, only these two, and one other, have been produced. For now, though, it’s enough to rejoice in those that have arrived: in the way they infuse some tired, tempest-tossed old forms with new blood.
But patience is a virtue of both “Sojourners” and “Her Portmanteau” — as it will have to be for theatergoers eager to see what Ms. Udofia does next with this family. Though five of the plays planned for the cycle have been written, only these two, and one other, have been produced. For now, though, it’s enough to rejoice in those that have arrived: in the way they infuse some tired, tempest-tossed old forms with new blood.
Follow Jesse Green on Twitter: @JesseKGreen
A version of this review appears in print on May 17, 2017, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Search of Home.
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