House of Virtue
A Domestic Tragedy
by
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OMBUDSMAN: I refuse to understand. You pledge restoration. Can virginity, once lost, be ever restored? You promise restitution. Can a pregnancy be ever undone? Go and pledge that to the future husband of that teenage girl. You were employed by the government to train up young girls into responsible career women, and not to make premature mothers of them. ASARE: Sir, I am sorry. But the temptation was too overwhelming. You are a man, so perhaps, you ought to know the frailties of our sex, though everybody knows that you have more than your average share of rectitude and moral strength. OMBUDSMAN: I do not fall so easily. All men get tempted by women but only the weak ones fall who already have a predisposition to fall. They fall who are already looking for opportunities to fall and even to rejoice in them as heaven-sent blessings. FORIWAA (visibly thunderstruck): Ah! ASARE: So? But some temptations are overwhelming. No matter how--- OMBUDSMAN (rises, holding up his hand deterrently): Enough! So long as I remain ombudsman of the National Education Service of Asempanaye; so long as I remain local president of The Crusade for Social Morality; so long as I remain the district chairman of the Parent-Teacher Association, no pervert, no pedophile, no rapist, no libertine, no dissolute seducer is going to get away with the lame excuse that a skinny girl of fourteen had the cunning to tempt him. Other ombudsmen can do whatever they like. I choose to abide by my principles. I have moral scruples. ASARE: Sir, have mercy! OMBUDSMAN: Your suspension stands till the regional office decides the issue. Today because of you I could not attend my daughter’s wedding. And just when I am about to settle down for the night, you bump in here with packaged bribes and crocodile tears. ASARE: Please. Sir! OMBUDSMAN: No!
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About the Book
“A great paradox is man whose reason and conscience apprehend and pursue a set of moral laws that aim at harmony and decency whilst his soul harbors a volcano of disruptive passions which yearn for satisfactions that produce abominations and discord.”
This excerpt from the preface to the play House of Virtue sums up the moral and emotional contradictions in the life of a high-standing government official, moralist, and disciplinarian—an ombudsman. When, as the aggressive spearhead of the Crusade for Social Morality (the strict movement against all forms of social indecencies and immorality including the sexual abuse of children), the Ombudsman is accused by his son-in-law of the crime of abusing his own daughter sexually, suspense builds up as to the outcome of the accusation, not only in the family of the ombudsman but also among theater audiences.
House of Virtue, as a piece of social criticism, not only foregrounds moral education as one of the fundamental functions of theater. It treats with naturalistic candor one of the basic passions of human nature and some of the archetypal issues of individual and family life that make a theatrical piece transcend the boundaries of time, space, and national culture.
About the Author
Ferkah Ahenkorah is director and resident playwright of the New Millennium Theatre in Oslo. Originally a migrant from Ghana, he represents a theatre tradition with African roots and highly influenced by the oral traditional performances of his native Akan community in Ghana. His theater in English, with exotic thematic and hybrid aesthetic elements, appears to be a welcome international intrusion into the dominant Norwegian performance traditions of the homeland of Henrik Ibsen.