Trials of Brother Jeroboam

With no stage-set, a minimum of props (a couple of wine bottles, and an old bicycle), a maximum of high spirits and a great deal of skill, the Pan-African Student Organization took the stage of the Quincy-Holmes Arts Festival Saturday night to present the comedy "The Trials of Brother Jeroboam" by Wole Soyinka. With the exception of one bit-part, the entire cast was composed of African students now living in the Boston area.

Soyinka, a contemporary Nigerian playwright, novelist and poet takes as his plot the attempts of a fraudulent religious prophet to win people to his Christian teachings by promising them worldly benefits: to one, a prime-ministership, to another, the position of head clerk. Each character is pious on the surface but greedy, lusty and ambitious on the inside, and the most humorous moments come when these inner feelings are most bluntly and frankly expressed as when the phony prophet's disciple, Chume, whose principal desire in life is to beat his wife, pleads with his mentor, "Just once! Just once! Please, let me beat her! Abuse! Abuse! All I get is abuse!" In another scene, a member of Parliament, who dreams of becoming prime minister, is caught alone on the beach, practicing the gestures and facial expressions that will accompany the speeches he hopes to give in Parliament someday.

The program notes explain that Soyinka's intention is to "expose satirically the messianic movement in West Africa. Over recent years, there have developed in various African countries prophetic movements which have