Yess, Boss!
Yess, Boss is a play by the Zambian playwright and director Tsungai Garise, a rather prolific individual who seems to churn out play after play, most of them being staged right here in Zambia.
Though Zimbabwe has quite a history as far as the performing arts go, not in the least fostered by the yearly HIFA, the Harare International Festival of the Arts, Zambia is quite the backwater in said discipline.
Not that this puts mister Garise down, as this show alone is being performed five times within one week, all at the Alliance Francaise, with next week seeing five showings of yet another play by Garise.
Then again, the 30 or so spectators of the play, almost all white, indicated the general level of interest for the performing arts here in Zambia.
So, if anything, Garise has to be commended for his boundless optimism as well as his productivity.
While the show is mildly entertaining and the actors are reasonably decent in their performances, the whole thing has a hint of slapstick to it.
Further, as the individual scenes are alternated with short musical interludes, consisting of singing and dancing, I’d suspect the show would be found more agreeable by an African audience, the more sad there’s such little interest in performing arts, here.
The play’s about some wheeling and dealing at a small office, where an important employee is fired by the boss, then tries to win his position back.