A play written by one of Nigeria’s foremost playwright late James Ene Henshaw, “Medicine for Love” is set to open in Accra National Theatre Ghana today and tomorrow. The play, which is set in the 1950s, is a hilarious take on the often-contradictory choices that the modern African man has to make.
The play set to celebrate James Henshaw, features top Ghanaian movie actors such as Naa Ashorkor, Ken Fiati, Harold Amenyah, Roselyn Kwasie, AJ Sarpong, Valerie Asare, Wilhemina Buadie, Danny Delong, and many others.
“Medicine for Love” is a play about a young and successful man, Ewia Ekunyah, who has three main problems: His powerful traditional wives who the elder relatives have chosen for him to marry, his ambition of winning the election for a parliamentary seat, and finally whether to employ methods dictated to him by reason, education and religion to solve his domestic and public problems or to employ the services of a traditional medicine man.
Instead of using the names of the characters in the novel, which were Nigerian, director Ama Achiaa Prempeh and producer by April Communications chose to use Ghanaian names such as Atswei and Araba. Issues in ‘Medicine for Love’, which was written in the 50s, are quite pertinent in today’s society, as marital strife, is a never ending human dilemma.
The playwright himself
James Ene Henshaw was born in Calabar on August 29 1924 and died August 16 2007. He is an Efik, a tribe in the Southern part of Nigerian, which makes up about 2 percent of the population. Jame’s plays treat various aspect of African culture and tradition and have been widely read and acted in Nigeria. He was also a physician.
James Henshaw’s works include:
- This Is Our Chance: Plays from West Africa published 1957
- Children of the Goddess, and Other Plays published 1964
- Medicine for Love: A Comedy in Three Acts published 1964
- The comedy Dinner for Promotion published 1967
- Enough Is Enough: A Play of the Nigerian Civil War produced 1975
- A Song to Mary Charles published 1984
