The inevitability of unshakeable love

There was no description of Ibi Kontein’s Back for Ground on the booking website, so I went in blind. However, in the opening scene, Ijeoma, the lead character, punctuates her monologue with a song about bending over, arching her back, and bringing joy to men in different colors and sizes, then I get it: Back FOR Ground.

This is a play about a love that persists. Ijeoma, our heroine, is a sex worker whose love interest is a well-built, handsome, and very appropriate man (think of a chivalrous suitor from the Victorian era, but Nigerian). The story says he insists on marrying her despite her ‘past’ and societal pressures. 

Most of the characters are nuanced, flawed, and relatable. Despite her profession, Ijeoma has a subtle innocence that tugs at your heart and makes you worried for her. Her mother, a foulmouthed, schnapps-guzzling, former sex worker, is larger than life. Ijeoma’s love interest, our Victorian Nigerian is, however, a little disappointing. His delivery is not believable - and maybe this is fitting, because while anyone can find love, the average Nigerian man would never fight to marry a sex worker.

A truly successful play grips its audience so completely that they can recognize and preempt a motif. In Back for Ground, Ibi Kontein uses two such motifs: one, when the villain is about to refer someone to the Bible for ‘edification’. And the other, more poignant one, is when Ijeoma is about to break into what I call the Sex Work Anthem, an earworm that I have stopped just short of singing several times. 

Ijeoma, bend for me; I bend

Ijeoma, move your hips; I move

Ijeoma, spread your legs; I spread

Ijeoma, arch your back; I arch

Ijeoma, go low. I go low, low, low.

My one true grouse with the play is that it leans into tropes. I think Nigerian plays have run so far away from tropes, they have barreled right into them. In the past year, I have seen a lot of plays where heroes and heroines have been practical. My best guess is that this play’s writers adjudged practicality to be the new trope and decided to go in the opposite direction. But unshakeable love is also one of the oldest tropes of all. Another trope is the Nigerian-pastors-are-villains schtick. It is uninspired and outstandingly lazy. 

Back For Ground is not overly ambitious. It does not attempt to stimulate the audience’s senses like an excellently-executed musical or well-made tearjerker. There is no pomp or pageantry. The stage is spare. Costumes are moderate. It is devoid of showmanship. It is a story of fundamental values: love, morality, family, survival, honor. I could tell the ending from the middle, and still, I enjoyed the journey there.