A family haunted by history in Udofia's ‘runboyrun'

Boston Globe

18-03-2025

The actors were ranged horizontally across the stage, facing the audience at the Huntington Theatre, with scripts on music stands in front of them. Director Christopher V. Edwards sat onstage to the left of the actors as, in a measured voice, he narrated the overarching elements of the narrative and recited Udofia's stage directions.
The format was distracting at first, but the lack of a full staging ended up mattering less than expected. The cast's all-out performances gave 'runboyrun' a steadily accumulating power, along with Udofia's script.
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What a gifted writer she is, possessed of the ability and discipline to delve into the mysteries of human behavior while mining a vein of lyricism, even poetry.
The Ufot Family Cycle is a project of considerable scope: More than 35 arts organizations will be involved in productions of the plays in the next two years. Loretta Greco, who is now artistic director at The Huntington, produced the world premiere of 'runboyrun' in 2016 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Three years later, Greco directed a production of the play at New York Theatre Workshop.
The play dramatizes the lasting effects of wartime trauma as it moves back and forth in time between Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2012, and Nigeria in 1968, when it's convulsed by civil war.
You couldn't help but think of Ukraine, of Israel, of Gaza, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of the immense suffering war has caused in so many times and places, of what one character in 'runboyrun' calls 'the broken pieces of the world.'
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The play begins in 1968 in Nigeria, where a woman identified as Sister (the vibrantly alive and altogether astonishing Abigail C. Onwunali, building further on her remarkable performances in '
The war, which is in its second year when the play takes place, had erupted when the state of Biafra, mainly inhabited by the Igbo people, declared independence from Nigeria. Boy seldom speaks, but Osuala communicates the character's fear and grief by repeatedly tapping her chest – a gesture that just breaks your heart. (Later, we're also introduced to Mother, portrayed by Ngozi Anyanwu, and her first-born son, Benjamin, played by Tosin Morohunfola.)
Tosin Morohunfola and Ngozi Anyanwu in "runboyrun."
Annielly Camargo
Then the action shifts to Worcester in 2012, where the marriage between Abasiama (played by Udofia) and Disciple (Chike Johnson), both Nigerian immigrants, is on the verge of collapse. Abasiama senses that Disciple has told her only a portion of the story of his life, and sees that as undercutting their chance at true intimacy.
Unbeknownst to him, Abasiama is applying for a job as a researcher at a university. Disciple, meanwhile, is a welter of insecurities. Even though his contract to teach African history at another college has been renewed, he is humiliated by student complaints about what they claim is his odor.
Beyond that, he's in a state of high agitation, fretting about a door that mysteriously opened and a computer that went on the fritz, and also by the sensation that something is on his leg. Abasiama is clearly exhausted by him, but Disciple insists: 'There is an energy. Something lives in here with us. Has
been
living here.'
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Udofia's presence in the cast was a fascinating aspect of 'runboyrun' on Friday night. How often do you get to see a playwright performing in her own work, interacting with the characters she created and speaking the dialogue she wrote?
It turns out that, along with everything else, Udofia is quite a fine actor. And from the way the past flows in and around the present in 'runboyrun,' she clearly understands that remembrance is not optional. It's an obligation.
Or, as Disciple puts it: 'I have not forgotten. And even if I try to forget? Even if I try to forget, it is in the blood.'
RUNBOYRUN
Play by Mfoniso Udofia. Adapted for audio play by Catherine Eaton. Directed by Christopher V. Edwards. Produced as an audio play adaptation by The Huntington and Next Chapter Podcasts in partnership with GBH and Boston Public Library. Review of performance on March 14 at the Huntington Theatre.
Don Aucoin can be reached at