Cheche Gallery at the Kenya National Theatre isn’t meant to hold more than 60 people. Yet on a Madaraka Day Sunday evening, it packed in over 100 eager bodies – crammed together on plastic chairs – to witness Francis Ouma (Volume), popularly known as Faiz, give his all to his one-man show It’s Such a Good Time. And maybe, just maybe, they’d one day tell their kids they were only a few feet away when the 27-year-old became one of the greatest performers on Kenya’s stage.
I sat in that audience, awestruck as I watched this one-man show transcend theatre into something much, much bigger. From the moment he sauntered onto the stage from the back door, softly swaying to Fancy Fingers’ Amanda Pressure, it was clear: Ouma is a master manipulator of the audience. He knows how to win them, how to draw them in, how to amuse, surprise and shock them. Over the course of the show’s three-hour run, Ouma, in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s words, managed to “disarm us with comedy and then punch us in the gut with drama.” It was almost like a sport to him – chess, but with fewer rules. We fell in love instantly with his beat-down maroon trousers, his checkered shirt, unruly afro, and his natural boyish charm that has consistently stolen the show, on screen and on stage, even when he isn’t the main act.
Written by Sanchez Ombasa and Emanuel Chindia, and directed by Gilbert Lukalia (Mission to Rescue), It’s Such a Good Time is no ordinary play – it’s Ouma’s personal story. He draws from his own life experience to create a raw, introspective, and authentic narrative that invites us to reflect on our own paths. Ouma displays insane range, shifting seamlessly between humour and pain as he takes us through a journey of healing, self-discovery, and growth. One moment we’re laughing as a soon-to-be dad Ouma budgets for “extra baby oil,” and the next, we’re trapped in a 20-minute labyrinth of harrowing montage where his violent (step)father is physically assaulting his mother, violating his sister, verbally and physical abusing his siblings and raining all manner of havoc on their household.
The tonal shifts are fluid, the character transitions effortless. Ouma is captivating from start to finish – you see his emotions, you see his wit, and you see him working in every aspect of this material. While some elements are exaggerated for storytelling, what we witness is a fully actualised character in all his chaotic, traumatised, “slightly depressed” and hilarious glory – delivering exactly what he had promised.
Back in April, while preparing for this show, Ouma had said, “This isn’t just another theatre performance for me. It’s my legacy. It’s me stepping into my greatness and power as an artist. This is an experience that’s going to elevate me to my best work yet. Yes, it scares me every day when I think about it. But we do it scared.”
Under Lukalia’s direction, the staging is minimal. There’s a couch, some lights and balloons, a projector screen to enhance visual moments, a bar stool, and a baby’s bed. It’s all designed to keep our attention fixed on Ouma, who carries the performance with remarkable physicality and the kind of charisma that makes you feel like you’re in on every joke.
As the play opens, Ouma is the successful young actor having “such a good time” painting Nairobi nights in the colours we are all too familiar with – smoky night parties at Mollis (if you know you know) and boogie events at Nairobi Street kitchen. But there’s a shocker: he’s expecting a baby. But does he even know the first thing about being a dad?
Well, he knows something alright.
He takes us back to his childhood in Mathare slums, eating omena every day. There’s no father in his life, just a helpless mother and two hungry siblings. He’s unceremoniously shipped off to upcountry to live with the grandparents. The father-figure he meets is less a grandfather and more of a deranged military camp commander. Soon, he’s back in Mathare as a teenager who has just completed high school. His siblings had long dropped out of school. The previously missing father is back. But is he a father? Is he even a man? He’s temperamental and violent. When Ouma is locked out of the house one night with his siblings – whose stories we hear through pre-recorded voices – as the monstrous father rains a hailstorm on their mother, all he can think of is “anaua mom, anaua mom, he’s going to kill my mother!” Every emotion hits like a stampede.
The scene that follows is epiphanic. The present-day, soon-to-be dad Ouma enters into an altercation with the girl carrying his child. In a fit of rage, he pins her against the wall, raises his fist, and just as he is about to deliver a blow, he sees a vision of his father, only that he has become him. Are we all destined to become our fathers? Can we truly escape the ghosts of the men who raised us? These are questions all men, at some point in life, have had to grapple with. It’s a question Ouma grapples with too as a father and as a man, and in this play, forces as to (re)confront.
It’s Such a Good Time unpacks the weight of abusive childhood and sexual and gender-based violence with such searing honesty that watching it felt like an exercise in therapy. A recognition of how abuse is so entangled with the self, whether we want it to be or not. How over time and oftentimes without even realizing it, our trauma becomes part of us, our personality, almost ingrained in our DNA.
In the end, Ouma allows us to acknowledge that we are capable of hurting others, that we can be deeply flawed through no fault of our own, but also that we can choose to work on ourselves every day and become the people whose reflections we would be proud of. In the audience sat Ouma’s mom and sister, and it was impossible not to notice the bright glow of pride in his mother’s face as she watched her son transcend entertainment to become a master showman with something to say about himself and society.
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