Witness Uganda at American Repertory Theatre

I Witnessed Uganda, Alright...

by Conrad Soloman

If you want to watch a twelve year old child’s dream about a nameless region in Africa in the form of a G-rated, Disney movie style musical, complete with the ignorance of thought provoking concepts like genocide and war, then don’t wait around to get tickets for Witness Uganda at the American Repertory Theatre. Witness Uganda, a piece created by Griffin Matthews and Matt Gould, attempts to captivate its audience (explain how it was supposed to captivate the audience, or what they were trying to attempt) through the use of a generic Disneyesque musical score, simple and mindless dialogue, and a constant barrage of jokes that are often not even worthy of a chuckle.

Throughout the entire show, I couldn’t help wondering if the director, Diane Paulus, had intended for me to feel like a little kid that needed to have his hand held. Almost all of the dialogue and the lyrics in Witness Uganda says exactly what doesn’t need to be said because it is already understood. Here’s a hyperbolic example; Griffin Matthews cries on stage after being abandoned by his brother and says ‘I’m really sad that my brother has abandoned me’ and ‘I feel so alone now’. Hyperbolic, yes, but my example still does not begin to describe the pain you endure when you are subjected to constant repetition of dialogue that holds your hand, as if you were a problematic child who needs to wear a leash in public. If you enjoy theater where you can sit back and be spoon fed all the answers to things that are potentially thought provoking then Witness Uganda may not be a bad musical for you. What’s more, is that the script tends to make fun of every serious moment up until the second act, where apparently, things start to get a little more serious. One of the biggest disappointments of Witness Uganda is that the script diligently takes what should be the defining moments of each character and either interrupts, cuts short, or straight-up makes fun of what makes a moment significant. It felt like the script was prohibiting me from actually developing a connection with any of the characters by inserting what seemed to be hundreds of half-wit one-liners that were often hardly worth a slight chuckle.