By Henry Akubuiro
Theatre at its best does not scream. It listens. It leans forward. It invites you into a language of gesture, silence, and breath. Last Friday, at the Lagos Theatre Igando, such theatre unfolded in Ashes of Promise, an original play written and directed by Olamigoke Omowale Okelola, whose bold departure from adaptation to authorship marks a moment worth our full attention.
Already known for his articulate interpretations of The Gods Are Not to Blame and The Lion and the Jewel, Okelola steps into new territory with this debut script —and with it, he crafts something deeply personal yet quietly political. It is a play about broken things: gourds, homes, trust, memory. But more importantly, it is a work about how, through those fractures, a society’s most enduring values —honour, truth, and legacy —can still flicker back to life.
The production is intimate, deliberate. We are introduced to Abéfé, a bead-seller of quiet dignity, who opens the play not with action, but with invocation. Her exchange with Queen Adérónkẹ́ in the marketplace is no mere scene-setting; it is an act of world-building. Through a single strand of coral beads, Okelola weaves together womanhood, ritual, royalty, and the unspoken burden of cultural erasure. “Even ashes remember the flame,” Abéfé murmurs —a line that lingers long after the lights fade.
Okelola’s direction here is notable not for its extravagance but for its restraint. The marketplace is not cluttered with props —it breathes. His blocking reveals the story as much as his script: characters move in curved patterns, not straight lines, mirroring the non-linear way memory and conflict unfold in traditional storytelling. This is not spectacle. It is curation.
The core conflict, introduced in Act 2, is deceptively domestic: two young maidservants, Tánná and Olúyẹmí, break a sacred gourd and spin lies to avoid blame. But as the consequences unravel in Acts 3 and 4, what first seems like a household mishap becomes a metaphor for societal collapse. Abéfé’s fury is not only maternal; it is moral. Her rage echoes generations of silenced women who, in keeping the home intact, held the culture together.
To his credit, Okelola allows tension to simmer without ever overspilling. In lesser hands, this material might tilt toward melodrama. But the playwright-director opts instead for slow-burning emotional truth. His use of silence is masterful. The moment in Act 3, when Abéfé discovers the broken shrine, contains almost a full minute of stillness. And yet, not a single person in the audience dared move. That is direction working in tandem with performance.
Speaking of which, the ensemble is strong throughout. The actress playing Tánná brings an agile defiance to her role, while Olúyẹmí is played with simmering calculation. Their final reconciliation —no tears, no apologies, only hands working together to restring old beads —is a quiet triumph. But it is Abéfé, played with elegant stoicism, who anchors the production. Her every gesture suggests a woman for whom memory is both a burden and a compass.
The stage design is spartan but effective. The shrine, the stall, and the Queen’s chambers are all signaled by lighting shifts and subtle costume cues rather than elaborate set changes. This minimalist approach allows the language —and Okelola’s thematic intentions —to take center stage. Even the Yoruba used in climactic scenes is left untranslated, trusting the audience’s emotional literacy to bridge the gap. It is a wise gamble.
One might critique the symbolism in Act 4 as a touch overt —the cracked bead metaphor is reiterated rather than reimagined —but such clarity may be deliberate. This is a play that wants to be understood, not obscured. And there is value in that.
The reception at Igando confirms what many in attendance already suspected: Ashes of Promise is not a quiet success; it is a necessary one. Both the 3 p.m and 6 p.m. shows played to full houses, and conversations in the lobby lingered well into the evening. The production will next travel to Lagos Theatre Epe, a move that promises to broaden its impact and deepen its cultural reach.
For a director still early in his authorship, Okelola shows rare thematic coherence. He is preoccupied not with innovation for innovation’s sake, but with form as memory —a way of preserving and passing down the intangible. Ashes of Promise may be about beads and broken rules, but it is really about storytelling itself: what is held, what is lost, and what, against all odds, can be strung together again.
It may be his first original work, but it feels like a culmination. If the ashes, indeed, remember the flame, Okelola has just lit one that will not go out soon.