Nene Aliemeke’s raw solo performance in Joy Isi Bewaji’s new play is stirring strong reactions in Lagos theatre halls. Here’s why.
A woman stands on stage in a wedding gown. No groom shows up. No supporting cast arrives to soften the blow. For the next hour, she carries the entire story alone, and the audience carries it with her.
That is the premise of Where’s My Groom?, the new one-woman play written and directed by Joy Isi Bewaji, starring actress Nene Aliemeke. It has become one of the most quietly talked-about theatre productions running in Nigeria this month, and once you understand why, it is easy to see the appeal.
The play follows a woman who grew up carrying responsibilities meant for adults. She became the financial backbone of her family while still young, the one who found early success just to keep everyone else afloat. Her own needs came last, if they came at all.
Then came a relationship that finally felt like it belonged to her alone. It didn’t last. The man left, and married her sister.
By the time the play catches up with her, she is standing in a wedding dress, chasing something she cannot fully explain, making choices that frustrate as much as they move you.
What makes the production striking is its restraint. There is no ensemble to lean on, no scene partner to share the emotional load. Aliemeke, known to many from her role in Netflix’s The Origin: Madam Koi-Koi, holds the entire stage by herself, and somehow the story never feels thin.
Bewaji’s writing isn’t interested in easy sympathy. Instead, it asks audiences to trace a woman’s most extreme choices back to their root, an early life shaped by neglect and betrayal, so that what looks like instability from the outside starts to make painful sense from within.
Part of the play’s power comes from how Aliemeke uses the room itself. She walks among the audience, makes eye contact, asks questions. People respond out loud, in laughter, in shock, sometimes in disagreement. Rather than breaking the mood, it deepens it. The play seems built for that kind of reaction.
Where’s My Groom? runs every Sunday at 5 pm for the rest of July.
