Divorce or Suicide? brings laughter

Mr. and Mrs. Wimbledon have been at each other’s throats over “irreconcilable” differences in their marriage and when all seem lost, the couple seeks spiritual assistance from a pastor  to help salvage their union.

But unknown to Mrs. Wimbledon, her husband, played by Ecow Smith Asante, also consults a fetish priest for “kpa kpa kpa” movements for both his marriage and business prospects. Mrs. Wimbledon wants a divorce because he is lazy and not good in bed as well.

One night, during one of their heated arguments, the couple is unexpectedly paid a visit by their pastor and in the quest to paint a good picture of their union; they resort to living as a happy couple to impress the man of God.

For them, the “family that prays together lives together” but Paapa, the pastor, had his own means of finding out the “status” of the couple.

He disguises himself as a juju man and helps the couple to find solution to their marital problems by teaching them the “laws of divorce”.

And that is what story writer and producer, Latif Abubakar, and his Globe Productions chronicle in their latest play, Divorce or Suicide? Which was staged at the National Theatre last Friday to an enthusiastic audience?

The drama revolves around five characters, Mr. Wimbledon ( Ecow Smith Asante), his wife, Mrs. Wimbledon (Pearl Darkey), their son, Kofi , his girlfriend and Adjetey Annang ‘Pusher’ who played a dual role of pastor and juju man.

It is just as well that the play was labelled “a humour-packed stage play” because patrons had loads of doses of laughter from start to finish. However,  it was quite difficult to grasp the lessons the play aimed at teaching.

For instance, the juju man’s “terms of divorce and laws of divorce” were not aptly defined in the play but that notwithstanding,  Adjetey ‘Pusher’ Annan’s dual act as a priest and a juju man was top notch and drew large applauses from the audience.

In their past productions, Globe Productions have fallen short of some technical hitches but it seems they have grown over the years since their onscreen adverts were better co-ordinated this time and there were no yawning gaps on the stage as had happened in previous productions.

Previous productions from the stables of Globe Productions include Romantic Nonsense, You May Kiss The Corpse, Gallery of Comedies, The Second Coming of Kwame Nkrumah, What Can Come Can Come and Don’t Dress for Christmas.