From
TWO HORSEMEN
by ’Biyi Bandele-Thomas
Two Horsemen premiered at the Gate Theatre in London on 27 July 1994, as part of the London New Play Festival, directed by Roxanna Silbert and performed by Leo Winger (Banza) and Colin Farlane (Lagbaja).
’Biyi Bandele-Thomas is a remarkable storyteller. His play Two Horsemen illustrates his love of language, imagination and stories. Set in a decrepit ‘room somewhere’ in a timeless world where two street sweepers, Banza and Lagbaja, seamlessly reinvent themselves, swap identities and thus alter their relationship to one another. Throughout the play, the men suggest they (along with a character called Sidi who we never meet) are the only survivors of a flood which wiped out the entire area. The two men escape a life of boredom by recounting the most obscure personal stories about their experience meeting God, close encounters with death and acts of murder and revenge. As the play unravels, it becomes difficult to tell if these stories are true or fabricated or even if the characters are alive or dead.
About the Playwright
’Biyi Bandele-Thomas is probably best known for his award-winning play Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn’s seventeenth-century novel of the same name, which won an EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Play in 2000. Two Horsemen was selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival.
’Biyi Bandele-Thomas was born in Nigeria in 1967. He resides in London where he has built an impressive career as an award-winning playwright, poet, screenwriter and novelist. After studying drama at Obafemi Awolowo University, he won the international playscript competition in 1989 for Rain, which enabled ’Biyi to complete his one year scholarship in London. ’Biyi never returned to Nigeria and instead embarked on a successful writing career in London, working with reputable theatres, namely the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Other published plays by ’Biyi Bandele-Thomas include: Rain, Marching for Fausa, Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought, Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys, Brixton Stories, a stage adaptation of his own novel The Street, and Happy Birthday Mister Deka.
Summary (Extract)
The following speech has been extracted from the second and final act of the play, entitled ‘Howling’. Set during the night-time the scene opens with a fusion of different distressing sounds; a dog barking and whining, car engine failing to start and someone screaming. The upsetting soundscape triggers a conversation about death, rape and God. BANZA takes this opportunity to talk about his paranoia bought on by the experience of working as a morgue attendant surrounded by dead corpses.
Sometimes, you know, sometimes I’m overcome with a paranoia: I’m the last human being left on earth and I’m surrounded by five billion corpses. Phew! Five billion. The thought makes me grin like a fool.
[Pause.]
Do you know that a man’s beard continues to grow even after he’s dead? And the nails as well. Until you begin to rot. I was once a morgue attendant, you know. Before the flood. Superb job. Made you feel like God. Sometimes after yet another of those multiple accidents involving those luxury buses, and the casualties were brought in and stacked one upon the other like so many lumps of yam in a barn, I’d stand among them, these denizens of the graves, alone, savouring the gut-smell of blood and bile and decay that filled the air like sour-sweet mango perfume. I would stand among them, smiling back at those who smiled … [Demonstrates.] “Hello, baby, how’re you doing? I like the way you smile. Like a bloody bitch. I like the way you smile. Honest to God I do. Like the patron saint of all bitches. If there’s a hell, I’ll meet you there. Buy you a drink. And that’s a date.”
[Pause.]
“Hello, old man.” [Fondles an imaginary protrusion.] “Now, that’s my man. Went and croaked with a hard-on, didn’t we? I’ve got half a mind to give you a blow-job right now. Just to see the look on God’s face. I bet you must have been some teenage idiot’s sugar daddy. Were you thinking dirty when it happened? A big problem for the undertaker. I hope you realise that, you fool. Dying with an erection for God’s sakes, have you no decency?” [to LAGBAJA] The more I look at you, the more I’m reminded of those corpses. You look – ordinary – most inordinately ordinary, have I never told you? Every time I look at your face I have this nauseating feeling that you could have been anyone else. You could have been me, for instance. Or my father or even my mother. You could have been anybody. Anybody. But… [Spits in disgust] …you chose to be you. I could sometimes almost mistake you for myself when we meet in the doorway.
[He turns pointedly towards LAGBAJA, who has all this while been staring passively into space, a fatuous grin permanently installed on his face.]
Have we never met in the doorway? [Waits in vain for a response.] I suppose we must have. Or you wouldn’t have that smug look in your eyes. You could choke a man to death with the stench of that smugness.
[He stares furiously at LAGBAJA’s passive, almost idiotic, absolutely smugness-bereft presence.]
You are the smuggest bastard I’ve ever met, do you hear, do you…
[Pause.]
Time is passing.
[Pause.]
I wonder what else it should be doing. Every minute of my life I’ve been the sole witness to the birth of another minute. It’s the most monotonous experience you could witness. God is a rather dodgy old sod, is what I say. I wish he would do something distantly radical one of these days. Stop the hand of the clock, for instance. But I guess he couldn’t. Might give him an orgasm, stain the holy robe, you see. And that’d mean a police record. Ruin his chances of a re-election.