In a bold reimagining of Robert Frost’s iconic poem, Kemi Bonuola’s stage adaptation for The Rays drama group transplants the poet’s wry exploration of human choice into a Nigerian context, where the stakes are higher, the choices more fraught, and the consequences inexorable. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes
Rarely has a poem been so gloriously misunderstood as Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”—commandeered, albeit with the best of intentions, by the rugged-individualism brigade for more than a century, and in the process saddled with a kind of notoriety all its own. For all the chest-thumping about blazing solitary trails, the poem is, in truth, about something subtler: how human beings, with a sly grin or solemn sigh, spin their choices into grand narratives of destiny. Frost himself purportedly chuckled at this habit—the typical human tendency to gild its decisions in hindsight as though they had always been inevitable. And irony, that most mischievous of muses, is woven into the fabric of the poem.
At its core the poem’s origins lie not in a solitary epiphany but in Frost’s gentle ribbing of his friend Edward Thomas, who could turn a simple country walk into an exegesis on indecision. Thomas’s dithering amused Frost, who immortalised it in verse. That famous final line—“I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference”—is less a trumpet call for trailblazers and more a sly wink at this humanity’s urge to rationalise. This tension—between Frost’s playful jest and the world’s appetite for solemn clarity—would, decades later, germinate into fertile soil for the stage.
Yielding to the power of adaptation, this very tension animates Kemi Bonuola’s bold adaptation of the poem (with the same title) for The Rays drama group. Directed by Patrick Akhidenor and staged at the rooftop pavilion of the Lekki Grail Centre on Sunday, August 17, the production plants Frost’s jest in Nigerian soil—and harvests something altogether more poignant. Bonuola’s play refuses to equivocate. Where Frost winks at mankind’s foibles, she insists on accountability. The poem’s leafy fork becomes a moral crossroads, its tranquil New England woods yielding to a nondescript Nigerian clearing, humming with songs, quarrels, laughter, and prayers.
Structured as a sequence of tableaux vivants, the play unfolds through a series of moments that lift the veil on the characters’ inner lives, each tinged with the air of a parable. A young couple, Chijioke and Chidinma (Edikan Abia and Tolulola Akintoye), cradle a child (Asgard Oparah) as they debate the future—not just their own but their child’s inheritance. Two friends, Adetola and Olubunmi (Jeff Joseph and Sami Akhidenor), jest their way toward parting, one down the narrow gate, the other toward the broad easy road. Sisters Love, Faith, and Joy (Tobiloba Olajide, Ozioma Akhidenor, and Praise Okoro) squabble in a scene pitched between Nollywood sitcom and Greek chorus before their quarrel sharpens: can kinship survive divergent roads? And in Ebuka (Onyebuchi Ojiyi), who sings nursery rhymes to stall his decision, the audience sees its own childish yearning—that destiny might relieve humanity of responsibility.
The emotional tempo shifts deftly: intermittent laughter at Temisan and Daniel (Sandra Alumona and Daniel Oparah), who squabble over a tablecloth as they split futures; sombre silence at Tolani (Uzunwa Osarenren), staggering under “a lifetime of bad choices” before turning back in despair. Bonuola doesn’t flatter the audience with illusions. Some choices are careless, some cowardly, some postponed into paralysis. Beneath the shifting tones lies one constant undertone: a bass note of consequences.
That undertone resounds all the louder when the epilogist Evaristus Okeakpu reveals Bonuola’s inspiration: In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message by Ab-ru-shin. If Frost’s wood was a place for sighing pilgrims, Bonuola’s clearing is a stage for eternal laws—the Law of Sowing and Reaping, of Attraction of Homogeneous Species, of Spiritual Gravitation. Theatre becomes catechesis; drama becomes rite.
At times, the production openly courts ceremonial ritual. The chorus intones “either/or” like an incantation. Crescendos feel less like background music than summons. In the closing tableau, as the cast chant Frost’s lines before swelling into the hymn “Courage, brother! Do not stumble”, the rooftop pavilion transfigures into a sanctuary. One leaves less with the memory of a performance than the aftertaste of a rite.
That this stern clarity may jar the sensibilities of less receptive contemporary audiences should surprise no one. Indeed, in a modern age accustomed to ironic ambiguity and endless deferment of meaning, Bonuola’s worldview can feel almost startlingly uncompromising. But in the sense of the Grail Message, clarity is not naivety; it is truth. Choices bear fruit—sweet or bitter—and humanity is accountable. Yes, the risk of didacticism hovers, but the cast breathe life into doctrine: Abia’s gravity, Akintoye’s tender apprehension, Ozioma Akhidenor’s passionate intensity, Ojiyi’s comic dithering. Teaching becomes theatre, theatre becomes introspection, introspection potentially transitions to revelation.
Frost may have teased that the difference was “all the difference” only in hindsight. Bonuola, guided by the Grail Message, insists the difference is real—immense, eternal. At this Nigerian crossroads, there are no trivial choices. Each road is a sowing, each step a seed. As the play gently underscores, the audience is not a mere spectator; they, too, stand at the crossroads, their own roads branching before them.
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