Writing Loss and Grief in Cheta Igbokwe’s Homecoming

Darlington Chibueze Anuonye and Anthony Chibueze Ukwuoma 

“Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the ways we expect.” This remark, excerpted from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, can serve as a fitting epigraph to Cheta Igbokwe’s play, Homecoming, a magisterial debut that leaves one wondering how many lives the playwright, a 26-year-old MFA candidate at the University of Iowa, has lived to be so intimately aware of the fragmentations of human destiny, the kind that manifest in the lives of his characters, Nwakibe and Adannaya Echeruo, and their new tenant, Johnson. 

Homecoming was first performed on May 6, 2021, under the directorship of Ugochukwu Victor Ugwu, at the Arts Theatre of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and later published in December 2022 by Noirledge Publishers, Ibadan. The play depicts the subtlety of loss, its consequences on the psyche of the grieving, and its tendency to alter their reality. It follows the life of Adannaya, a mother so broken by grief over the disappearance of her only son, Nebolisa, that she not only fiercely believes Nebolisa is studying at Oxford but also expects other people, especially her husband, Nwakibe, a retired teacher and a catechist, to validate her imagination. In Adannaya, Igbokwe creates an utterly devastated woman longing for someone with whom to anticipate the homecoming of her beloved son, who has been away for 30 years. Unlike Adannaya, Nwakibe acknowledges the fact of his son’s disappearance, but in a manner almost similar to Adannaya’s strange conviction, he believes that the chief priest of Ogwuogwu shrine, Ahumaraeze, is responsible for his predicament. Despite their dissimilar reactions to their tragedy, the Echeruo’s emotional attachment to their son’s return is deeply haunting. However, Igbokwe’s sympathetic rendering of the couple’s experience of loss draws the reader and the theatre audience into, as well as relieves them from, the puzzling grief that powers Homecoming.

Igbokwe’s involvement of the reader and the theatre audience in the dramatic experience gives Homecoming an epic quality, even though these participants may become, unlike in epic theatre, emotionally involved in the actions unfolding before them. For instance, Adannaya and Nwakibe are conscious of the audience witnessing and weighing their lives. By doing so, the play complicates the relationship between reality and illusion in theatre. In the following excerpt, Adannaya demonstrates her awareness of the witnessing audience: 

NWAKIBE: Untie me, so I can listen to his letter as you read.

ADANNAYA: You have never wanted to read his letters. (Stands, facing the audience.) He goes about telling people that I have lost my mind and that I now write letters to myself. Imagine, my own husband. (Turning towards NWAKIBE) True or false?   

Nwakibe finds Adannaya’s insistence that she knows their son’s whereabouts delusional, and this infuriates Adannaya to the point that she wishes Nwakibe dead. With this nearly-insane disposition, Igbokwe seems to draw our attention to the capacity of loss and grief to ruin human relationships. Adannaya’s desire to have a friend with whom she could share her fantasies makes her look forward to meeting Johnson, who is a writer, with the hope that if she makes a good impression on him, she will have at least one person who is not cynical about her truth. Loss and grief also upended Nwakibe’s life. For instance, he hates Ahumaraeze because the diviner offers him hope instead of a solution to his problem. So, while loss and grief render Adannaya obviously insane, they subtly alter Nwakibe’s mind.

Beyond demonstrating the individuality of human reactions to the enormity of loss and grief, Homecoming is also a commentary on the consequences of spousal hostility on children from violent homes. That Nebolisa disappeared on the night his parents quarrelled clarifies this observation. Perhaps Nebolisa, then ten years old, left home to escape domestic violence but got lost while wandering the village at night. Despite its tragic evolution, Homecoming is a most comical play. The following excerpt highlights Igbokwe’s ability to offer comic relief even in shockingly melancholic situations:

NWAKIBE:  My wife has lost her mind. Her senses have evaporated. 

JOHNSON:  How do you mean?

NWAKIBE:  You have eyes, don’t you?

JOHNSON:  I do.

NWAKIBE:  Writers are supposed to be perceptive. At least, I was told. I am not illiterate. 

JOHNSON:  I see.

NWAKIBE:  (still walking up and down) You don’t see anything. Does my wife look normal to you? When you look at her, Mr Writer, does she look sane?

JOHNSON:  I am still observing.

NWAKIBE:  But you have not observed anything. (Stops walking) Look, my enemies are at work. My wife has lost her mind. This is not Adannaya. The one I know cannot tie her husband up. 

JOHNSON:  (stands, his eyes wide with shock) You mean she was the one that tied you up?

NWAKIBE:  Sharap! Is your head correct? Who else would have tied me up in my own house? I could have done that to myself, right?

JOHNSON:  No.

The writer, Chimezie Chika, also remarks on Igbokwe’s terrific talent for sublimating tragedy with humour. For Chika, Homecoming is “comical and topical,” and in writing the play, Igbokwe “combines the allegory and trenchant politics of Soyinka’s satires and the social awareness of Shaw.” Rightly, the play’s sociocultural relevance is unmistakable. One illustration may suffice: in a conversation with Johnson, Adannaya says, “You people that are educated have sweet words for everything evil.” This is an indictment of the inclination of intellectuals to promote vices by offering guileful and self-seeking interpretations of social and cultural issues.

Homecoming plunges the reader and the theatre audience into depths of wonder. The experience of reading or witnessing the play will stay long with those who, like Adannaya and Nwakibe, dare to erase their loss and grieve differently.

•Anuonye, an editor and a writer, and Ukwuoma, the editor of Ngiga Review, writes from Owerri