Drama, as intense offstage as on,in 1960s Uganda ...

After more than thirty years in Australia, Tom Adams returns to England, where a chance meeting re-awakens memories of the 1960’s when he was a teacher in Kampala, Uganda – memories tinged with a sense of betrayal and personal compromise that still trouble him.

Back then, a clumsy innocent, hung up on his working-class background and the drab suburban life of his English Midlands upbringing, he is at first overwhelmed by the exotic nature of his African surroundings.

But following his induction into the expatriate theatre scene (namely KAPS: the Kampala Amateur Players) with its clashing egos and hot-house sexual shenanigans, he gradually – if with some residual guilt – finds himself becoming attuned to his new life, where he encounters Robert Kabarega, the charismatic African actor and writer who is having an affair with Sue Crossley, the wife of one of Tom’s teaching colleagues.

Sue is currently directing a production of Othello (which Tom is stage-managing) with Robert in the lead. But, when Robert, who has been working against the government of President Milton Obote, is arrested and accused of the murder of a prominent local MP, the production is thrown into chaos, Sue has a nervous breakdown, and Tom is rail-roaded into taking on the position of director himself.

Then Robert escapes from prison, persuading Tom to drive him on a wild adventure to the Kenyan border and safety.

Returning to Kampala, Tom’slife becomes even more complicated as he finds himself under investigation and harassment by the Ugandan police which blights his growing relationship with the Asian girl, Philomena Sharma, another teaching colleague.

In the midst of all this Othello is staged and is a farcical disaster. In spite of which, some time later, Tom agrees to direct another Shakespeare play for KAPS, King Lear, only to discover, just before its opening night that Robert Kabarega is back in Kampala, ostensibly to take Sue Crossley away with him, but in reality to lead an assassination attempt on Obote.

The attempt fails, riots ensue, the theatre is trashed and Tom is arrested and thrown into prison, to be finally expelled from Uganda as a Prohibited Immigrant.

Later, with the help of a laconic Australian hydro engineer, Dave Dawson, Tom moves to Sydney and a successful career as a television director.

Now he is back in England to discover the truth and significance of those events and relationships that shaped his life all those years ago in Uganda.

We leave him as he flies off once again to Africa, in search of some kind of personal, Lear-like, redemption.

About the author

DAVID ALLEN was born in Birmingham, England in 1936 and has an Honours degree in English. He taught in Uganda, East Africa between 1966 and 1970 and migrated to Australia in 1972 where he lectured in drama, worked as a theatre director and wrote extensively for the stage, radio and television. His plays have been produced all over Australia and in the UK, Germany, Holland, Ireland and the USA. They include Cheapside, Gone With Hardy, Pommies, Modest Expectations and Upside Down at the Bottom of the World. Television credits range from Neighbours, Flying Doctors and Rafferty’s Rules to Snowy, GP and Blue Heelers. David has taught at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, won two Writers Guild ‘Awgies’ and the Victorian Premier’s prize for drama. Kabaka Lear is his second novel. The first remains unpublished. He is married, lives in Sydney and has two daughters and four granddaughters.

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