‘The Trial of Dedan Kimathi’ Review: Bilal Mwaura’s Kimathi Is Measured and Magnetic in a Revival Made for This Moment

This has been the season of the big stage. For months now, Nairobi has served up a buffet of vibrant stagings embroidered with cultural satire, political commentary, historical revisionism, visceral solo performances, musical dramas, biopics. And woven through all of them is a singular thread: contemporary commentary. They’ve all had something to say about Kenya’s present social and political climate.

I imagine that when director Stuart Nash was crafting the blueprint for a 10-day revival of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo’s 1976 play The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, the most vital element to get right wasn’t who would play the eponymous role. It was not even how to restructure the play to suit today’s audience. It was how this 49-year-old classic would comment on today without sacrificing its authenticity. Without sounding tongue-in-cheek or coming off as a pastiche. Did he succeed? Hold that thought.

It’s 7 PM on 28 June, and I’m seated at the Kenya National Theatre among an eclectic audience who, despite a turbulent few days few days of politics, protests and state violence, remain expectantly cheerful. I read the play once years ago, but I’ve never seen it performed live. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi is arguably Kenya’s greatest historical revisionary piece of literature. An unapologetic valorisation of Dedan Kimathi, the play unfolds as a symbolic trial, blending realism and allegory. It rejects colonial narratives that labeled Mau Mau fighters as terrorists, instead portraying Kimathi as a defiant and principled leader of the liberation struggle – the true father of the nation.

I scan the eager faces thronging the theatre. Many here, I suspect, would give anything to have a man like Dedan Kimathi walk among us again.

Government-led abductions which spiked after the June 2024 Gen Z revolution have spilled over into 2025. And just as things seemed to quiet down, the tragic death of a young Kenyan at the hands of the police rocked the nation’s core. “He hit his head on the wall,” the initial police statement read. What callousness. What impunity. Calls for accountability follow. A flood of outrage. Kenyans take to the streets. The government responds like the government of today responds: with more brutality. Young blood stains the pavements. Batons crack unsuspecting heads. Tear gas chokes the city center. And bullets fly.

Such upheaval sets the stage for Nash’s opening scenes of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. Only that we’re in the 1950s, and the chaotic onslaught is targeting Kimathi, not protesting Kenyans. This opening deviates from the original which begins with the trail itself. But this is the genius of Nash who’s no stranger to reviving plays. He has previously helmed Francis Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City, Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid Kenyanised as Mgonjwa Mwitu, and Ngũgĩ’s other play I Will Marry When I Want, among others.

Nash respects the audience’s self-awareness, their sensibility, and their ability to connect the dots between the past and the present. So for the play’s opening, he simply inserts a scene that mirrors what we witnessed on our streets just days earlier: a bustling marketplace, then gunshots, flying batons, wailings, trampling and brutal arrests. It’s impossible to miss this reference. The performance directly comments on the present without sacrificing an ounce of the play’s authenticity. Under Nash, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi remains true to its time and place – the two elements of a play that I insist should never be tampered with, not even in an attempt to modernise it.

My only qualm is that this premise is disrupted, however, when an askari character shouts, “Nitakupiga risasi close-range wewe!” Now, this on-the-nose reference to the present police brutality doesn’t necessarily water down the classic stature of the play, but it’s trite and completely unnecessary, as are all the present-day references that litter Kimathi’s profoundly intellectual monologues, robbing the audience of the intended emotional depth. 

This misstep aside, the set is a living, dynamic thing of beauty. It shifts from a colonial-era barter market with a live cow and squawking chickens to a layered scaffolding courtroom to a cell and torture chamber to a battlefield and a forest. Using movable panels and shifting light, the stage transforms with every scene. This fluidity reflects the elusive nature of truth in the play and keeps the audience sensorially immersed and emotionally disoriented. It’s choreography in wood and steel.

The cast – Bilal Mwaura, Lydia Gitachu, Thuita Mwangi, Jackline Mungai, Bhavnesh Chudasama, Dominic Mutemi, and Frank Kaguura – moves like a single living organism, breathing in sync, verbally sparring with each other with seamless rhythm. Their collective energy lifts the courtroom scenes beyond realism into something almost ritualistic.

The choice of Bilal Mwaura (40 Sticks) as Kimathi is an easy one. He is, quite simply, one of the finest dramatic actors of his generation. As Kimathi, he is uncertain as he is measured, cerebral as he is emotional, calm as he is tempered. From the moment the lights shine on him, Mwaura commands attention, not with volume, but with sheer gravity. His voice, rich and resonant, coils around the dialogue like a sermon, drawing us deeper into Kimathi’s moral universe with every phrase.

Lydia Gitachu (Kina) as the Woman goes toe to toe with Mwaura, infusing every line with aching urgency. Her voice trembles not from weakness, but from the weight of lived trauma. Her movements are grounded, deliberate, as though every step carries generations of struggle.

Thuita Mwangi is the scene-stealing contortionist wisecracker whose every move and every line evokes rapturous laughter. Jackline Mungai plays the Girl with a layered and dynamic range that actors twice her age can only dream of. She disappears completely into the role; her youthfulness tinged with fire, fear, and hope. One moment naive, the next ferocious, she shapeshifts with ease, embodying the future Kenya: bruised, but unbroken. Perhaps that is the message The Trial of Dedan Kimathi brings us from the past – that no matter how battered we may be, we remain unbroken.

Despite the emotional wreck of the ending, we’re left oddly hopeful. If someone like Dedan Kimathi loved this country so much as to die for it, then it cannot be that bad, and even if it is, it cannot be irreparable.

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