A Drop of Honey

Abstract

“A Drop of Honey” by Meki Zewi is an unusual piece which the author calls “a contemporary musical”. It has a certain Brechtian element in that the plangent songs, such as the ironic theme song “A Drop of Honey”, echo like a leitmotif throughout the play. Yet some of the scenes are high comedy hinting even of Sheridan; the scene of Uloma hiding in the priest's bedroom has something of the screen scene of School for Scandal. Yet the discovered presence is the stock element in many comedies, and there is no direct borrowing, rather an attempt to create an evening of theater that has wit, music and considerable social satire. The “drop of honey” refers to the sweet joys of love, but it is also meant most literarily, as the double entendres of the songs make clear, that crucial drop of semen that creates life. To launch another citizen, “it's just a drop of honey”. But which of the three ardent admirers of Uloma provided the honey?--the lascivious doctor in the confines of his examination room, the priest temp...