Lydia Adetunji's Fixer takes a look Nigerian politcs and corruption but doesn't look deep enough says Naima Khan.
I can't decide if this play is trying to do too much or too little. Where there's scope for a detailed look at Nigerian politics, we get a brief overview of the global take on African news stories. And when we think we're going to get a detailed character portrait, we get only a glance at an intriguing, multi-layered man. The story follows a Nigerian fixer hooking up journalists with rebels destroying an oil pipeline, but he's also trying to get those same rebels to protect the pipeline for the oil consortium, with money changing hands left, right and centre. Disappointingly, the story is predictable and makes the same point repeatedly, but the plot twists aren't the point, and Adentunji focuses on her characters.
The only problem is, there are too many of them and so the wit and the insight is spread too thinly, we don't get to know enough about any of them and as the story plods on we really want to hear from the most intriguing, unfamiliar one. In a play called Fixer, you'd think the fixer would have more lines and it's a shame he doesn't, because Chuks is witty, earnest, and manipulated by everyone. Played flawlessly by Richard Pepple, he expresses frustration with a kind of stoic anxiety that is captivating to watch. We learn more about him as the play goes on, why he wants to mix with journalists and why he's so valuable to the oil consortium, but we never really hear enough from him.
By the end, our sympathies lie with him, and it's devastating to discover why the journalists who wrote him off as a “two-faced misery merchant taking money with each hand” were so wrong. In Adetunji's story he is collateral damage, a pawn, and in this play it feels like he is used to point out the many sides of corruption: the self-serving journalists who have their story before they've researched it and the oil executives with too much power, but Chuks never gets to make a statement of his own. We discover his point quite passively, which in some ways is refreshing, but unless you make a point of analysing the play, the Fixer's voice doesn't ring loud enough.
Lydia Adetunji has some brilliant ideas, her dialogue is clever and I definitely want to see more of her work, but her thoughts aren't explored to any satisfying level in this play.
Fixer runs at Oval House Theatre until 10th July.
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