Dede (left) doubts Ayamma’s acting abilities in Nollywood Dreams. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.
First there was Hollywood, an innovative industry that taught Americans how to dream in the 1920s. Then — in the 1970s — came Bollywood, the Hindi cinema that taught Americans how to laugh with an entire cast in a big production song-and-dance number at film’s end.
And in the 1990s came Nollywood, the Nigerian spinoff that now puts out more than 1,000 films each year.
Now, in 2023, a new breezy play at San Francisco Playhouse, Nollywood Dreams, explores Nollywood’s early days — satirically. With overlays of a romance and madcap bits of this ‘n’ that (including but not limited to over-the-top gestures and inflections).
The main thrust of the comedy is to exaggerate the shallowness of both Hollywood and its echoes.
Ghanian American playwright Jocelyn Bioh centers her storyline on a pair of sisters, Ayamma Okafor, who dreams of becoming a movie star despite having zilch experience (“This is my calling”), and shallow Dede, whose main “talents” are is avoiding work, reading gossip mags, and viewing a soap opera.
Director Margo Hall, a Black omnipresence in Bay Area theatrical circles on and off stage who recently was named artistic director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, squeezes rapid-fire laughs out of Anel Adedokun’s performance as Ayamma and Brittany Nicole Sims’s as Dede.
They roll their eyes and roll their eyes, wiggle their hips, exaggerate facial expressions and shouts, spell out ellipses as “dot, dot, dot” when reading, and get their bodies twisted in a phone cord. Ayamma hides behind a tall plant; Dede becomes verbally paralyzed when coming in close contact with her idol.
Mostly standard stuff, maybe, but not in the hands of two actors with comic genius to spare.
Adenikeh wears her emotions on her colorful sleeves. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.
More than adequately backing them up are four other gifted members of the all-black cast in Nollywood Dreams, Tre´vonne Bell as shady director Gbenga Ezie who’s casting his “The Comfort Zone” triangle love story; Tanika Baptiste as TV talk show host Adenikeh, an Oprah wannabe; Jordan Covington as Wale Owusu, a more than a little lecherous leading man; and Anna Marie Sharpe as serpent-tongued Fayola Ogunleye, Gbenga’s ex-lover, a faded star once known as “the Nigerian Halle Berry with Tina Turner Legs” whose deep southern accent is devilishly campy.
They all, of course, come across as caricatures. But funny ones. Hall and the actors succeed in making the play more hilarious than the words on a page.
Adding to the audience’s enjoyment of the show are Bill English’s tri-locale rotating set and the imaginative costume design by Jasmine Milan Williams (Adenikeh, for example, needn’t change garb, merely her flamboyant headwear).
It’s clear that the playwright wants to humanize Africans, especially West Africans, despite using a lens more than a little distorted by madcap sequences.
Ayamma (left) auditions for director Gbenga as fading diva Fayola waits her turn. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.
If you’re looking for reality, stay away; if, however, you’re looking for a good time, go see Nollywood Dreams even if it’ll take you a few minutes to discern what the players are saying because of their thick Nigerian accents.
Nollywood Dreams runs at SFPlayhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco, through Nov. 4. Tickets: $30 to $125. Info: (415) 677-9596 or http://sfplayhouse.org.
Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.
