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Boston Globe
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Unpacking family baggage in Udofia's ‘Her Portmanteau' at Central Square Theater
Advertisement But compression does not equal contraction when a playwright is possessed of a vision as rich as Udofia's. The past lives vividly in 'Her Portmanteau,' as Udofia examines how choices made and actions taken, or untaken, have a way of reverberating down the years. A certain slackness creeps in a couple of times, but not enough to put a dent in the overall excellence of the coproduction by Central Square Theater and the Black-led Front Porch Arts Collective. Lorraine Victoria Kanyike and Patrice Jean-Baptiste in "Her Portmanteau." Maggie Hall Photography Directed by Tasia A. Jones, 'Her Portmanteau' features a flat-out wonderful cast of three: Patrice Jean-Baptiste as sixty-something matriarch Abasiama Ufot, facing hard questions from the daughter who was raised in Nigeria by Abasiama's former husband; Jade A. Guerra as that daughter, Iniabasi Ekpeyong, 36, whose own portmanteau is stuffed with emotional baggage; and Lorraine Victoria Kanyike as the dutiful Adiaha Ufot, 30, who tries to play peacemaker in the charged exchanges between Iniabasi and Abasiama. (Adiaha calls Abasiama 'Mommy.' Iniabasi emphatically does not.) Advertisement 'Her Portmanteau' concerns itself with matters of language and culture and legacy, and, writ large, the immigrant experience. But there's nothing generic about Udofia's characters. She has taken pains to craft individualized portraits of members of the Ufot family in all their complexity and, especially in Abasiama's case, contradiction. Udofia deploys silence in 'Her Portmanteau' to a much greater degree than in the first three plays. Guerra's Iniabasi says nothing for a long period after she arrives at the apartment, virtually chilling the air. When she does speak, it is to throw barbs at her mother, criticizing the ingredients she uses in meals, and, most damningly, describing Abasiama as to her face as a woman 'who can't even speak her real language. Yawping at me in English!' Udofia, who grew up in Southbridge, Mass., and attended Wellesley College, is an actor as well as a playwright. Indeed, she played Abasiama in ' Chunks of that dialogue are rendered in the Ibibio language, sometimes with subtitles that provide English translations, sometimes not. That approach is effective in terms of keeping both sides of the family's heritage on an equal footing, but it will likely make some members of the audience wondering what they've missed. This one did. Advertisement When it comes to the overpowering ending of 'Her Portmanteau,' though, no words are needed. HER PORTMANTEAU Play by Mfoniso Udofia. Directed by Tasia A. Jones. Coproduction by Central Square Theater and Front Porch Arts Collective. At Central Square Theater, Cambridge. Through April 20. Tickets $25 to $96. , or 617-576-9278 x1 Don Aucoin can be reached at
Boston Globe
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Her Portmanteau' grapples with the pains of separation and connection in family
Advertisement In the Ufot Cycle's second drama Advertisement But what about Iniabasi? For the past 36 years, as we learn in 'Her Portmanteau,' Iniabasi (Jade A. Guerra, 'The Piano Lesson') has been living in Nigeria with her father, and hasn't seen her mother in person in more than 20 years. She has a 6-year-old son of her own, Kufre. But her father has now died, and she's arrived in the States looking for help—and a connection—with her mother, Abasiama (Patrice Jean-Baptiste). Dawn Simmons, co-artistic director of the Front Porch Arts Collective, at rehearsal for "Her Portmanteau." Nile Scott Studios Tasia A. Jones, the play's director, says Abasiama had resolved to return to Nigeria, but life got in the way. Before she knew it, she was putting down roots. 'Abasiama's intention was always to go back or bring her child back with her. It was not meant to be a forever departure from each other, and she's been struggling for the last 36 years to find her way back to her daughter.' While Abasiama has kept in touch with Iniabasi and has been sending her money after Ukpong's passing, she's also dealing with a strained marriage due to Disciple's deteriorating mental state. The Cycle's third play 'runboyrun,' to be released as a podcast this spring, chronicles Disciple's unraveling and its roots in a traumatic childhood in war-torn Africa. ''Runboyrun' is Disciple's backstory, which helps you understand what makes a man like this,' Udofia said in a Zoom interview. 'You'll wonder where your empathy lies with him and where your boundaries are with him.' Udofia, who grew up in Southbridge and went to Wellesley College, was mulling over the idea of birthright in writing 'Her Portmanteau.' 'What is each woman owed?' she asks. 'What does each woman think they know about history and the history of their family?' Advertisement Indeed, Iniabasi has no idea of the challenges Abasiama endured when she was pregnant with her, alone in a foreign country with an absentee husband. Even Adiaha, who's now in her early 30s, can't fathom 'the emotional reality of what it means to be in Abasiama's position,' Udofia says. 'So these three women are sitting on narratives and assumptions and histories that need to be drawn out. And they're duking it out about who has first position, who has primacy, and what does it mean to have two eldest daughters. So that they can then go, 'Well, how do we take a step forward?' Set inside Adiaha's New York City apartment, the play finds the three women together for the first time in more than two decades. The story heaves with subtext and barely concealed pain, anger, resentment, and sadness. 'There's so much happening underneath the surface with these three people,' Jones explained, 'so much unspoken history between them and unanswered questions, all of this stuff that's just hanging in the air that they're not talking about. Then when they finally do start to talk about it, it can be explosive.' The title's dual meaning refers to both the old-fashioned red suitcase that Iniabasi totes with her to America and the combination of Abasiama's two 'eldest daughters,' whose lives shaped her own and gave it meaning and remain at the heart of their blended family. For Lorraine Victoria Kanyike ('Chicken and Biscuits'), who plays Adiaha in 'Her Portmanteau,' 'There's a lot of push and pull between the two of us of who's really in charge here, who's really the eldest daughter in Mom's eyes.' Advertisement In 'The Grove,' Kanyike pointed out, Abasiama tells her, 'You are the 'Adiaha' I could keep here.' I had to send my other one away.' So I think Abasiama is reckoning with all of her life choices.' Indeed, a through-line through all of the Ufot Cycle plays, Kanyike said, is 'the theme of sacrifice and the rewards or the consequences of your sacrifices. Iniabasi is both a reward and a consequence but also a person that Abasiama holds a lot of shame and pain around.' Meanwhile, Jones explained, Inibiasi, 'is hurting, and she doesn't know how to express the hurt. So she lashes out a little bit. She doesn't know how to express what she's been feeling for so many years.' With 'Her Portmanteau' and 'runboyboy,' which was presented in two recent public readings, the Ufot Cycle is now moving beyond the Huntington mothership. Five more plays are still to come over the next year and a half. Lee Mikeska Gardner, artistic director of Central Square Theater, says a project of this scope could only Advertisement The Ufot Cycle also has the potential to boost the Boston theater scene's profile nationally. Simmons says she's heard from playwrights around the country that there's buzz about this major citywide undertaking. 'They're like, 'Whoa, this is epic.' What does it mean for the future that an entire community can rally behind a writer like this? This is a big opportunity.' HER PORTMANTEAU By Mfoniso Udofia, co-produced by Central Square Theater and the Front Porch Arts Collective. At: Central Square Theater, March 27-April 20. Tickets: from $25; 617-576-9278;
Boston Globe
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A family haunted by history in Udofia's ‘runboyrun'
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. Advertisement 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.' Advertisement 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.' Advertisement 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
