“Tings Dey Happen” Is Happening
Rodolfo Morales
9/25/07
If only the Niger Delta was as much fun as Dan Hoyle’s performance! “Tings Dey Happen” is an eye-opening experience that all theatergoers should experience. Writer and sole performer Dan Hoyle’s 90-minute production, being presented by the Culture Project, is a one-man show that keeps the audience riveted in their seats.
The story takes place in the Niger Delta, where oil companies have taken over and paid off the government for their own interests. Throughout the play, the audience is introduced to an array of different characters that Hoyle portrays vividly, and the viewers watch the action as Hoyle himself saw it when he was in Nigeria for a year as a Fulbright scholar. These characters range from Nigerian rebels who are fighting a war against the oil companies to an American ambassador, a Nigerian warlord, and to the very foreign oil workers that represent the oil companies. Viewers watch as each character gives their perspective on the oil politics happening around them, which includes the killings and kidnappings that are part of the daily routine in the oil-rich Niger Delta, as well as the blowing up of oil pipelines.
Hoyle’s lively portrayal of each character makes the play what it is. As he switches between roles, Hoyle perfectly changes his accent and adjusts his body movement so that each character is easily identifiable throughout the play. With such adjustments, it is not difficult for the viewer to imagine the setting that each character finds himself in, even though the stage behind Hoyle and his very clothes are all black, as if to symbolize the underlying darkness of the whole story.
Hoyle masters the accents of his characters perfectly, from the Scottish foreign oil worker, to the Nigerian rebels that speak Pidgin, an English dialect. One of the biggest surprises in the play is brought about at first seeing Hoyle, a slim Caucasian man, portraying Nigerian rebels and their speech with such accuracy. This very accuracy, which can definitely be considered a strongpoint, becomes the only weakness in the play. At times Hoyle’s Pidgin is so accurate that it is hard to understand what he is trying to say. Unfortunately, these occurrences tend to happen while the Nigerian rebels are speaking, the very people that are suffering the most and whose voices are the ones that need most be understood.
In addition, the mere shock of seeing Hoyle play characters that are clearly meant to be Nigerian may be a bit distracting to the viewer, and decrease the impact of the content itself. However, these minor problems are easily made up for by the rest of the show and can be overlooked by anyone that attends the show.
Each moment of “Tings Dey Happen” is one to be enjoyed by the audience members. Both Dan Hoyle’s extraordinary performance and the dry, sarcastic humor of the play leave the viewers thoroughly entertained. Yet they do not leave a person without a sense of learning about the problems of oil politics in Nigeria, and feeling sympathy for the people Hoyle seems to share sympathies with, the Nigerian Rebels.