I spent the morning of Monday with famous Nigerian stage and TV/Film diva Taiwo Ajai-Lycett, OON, at her place in Lagos and it was quite beneficial to sit with one of my highly esteemed mentors who was my first manager when I was aspiring to be an actor and a model at 15. We have not been in touch for over 20 years until we reunited at the 13th Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) on Sunday November 20, 2011. The organizers, Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) celebrated her 70th birthday in a special party as one of the connoisseurs and dignitaries who were honoured in a special combined LABAF Birthday Party for icons of Nigerian visual art, music and literature.

Dame Taiwo Ajai-Lycett is one of the few accomplished Nigerian actors who were famous in the UK before returning home to play leading roles on TV and the cinema before the emergence of Nollywood.

She attracted attention for her unique roles in BBC’s Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘em, ITV’s Black & Blue Farces and in the film A Warm December, directed by Sidney Poitier among many others.

You can read more about her bigography on http://taiwoajailycett.co.uk/biography.html.

"You look great," I said and was really glad to see her looking younger than her 70 years on earth.

We shared our progress reports and she was happy to know that I have been really resourceful as an artist and a writer. Then she told me about her lead role in Egusi Soup, the popular play by the award winning British Nigerian playwright Janice Okoh.

'In fact, we served Egusi Soup and pounded yam at the premiere in the UK," Dame Taiwo Ajai-Lycett enthused.
We discussed the play and the prospects of staging the Nigerian premiere.

Janice Okoh's Egusi Soup captures the melodramatic moments as a British-Nigerian family pack their suitcases and prepare to head home for a funeral they realise they will need to get rid of some excess baggage first…a fast, furious and funny new family drama about life in London, death in Lagos and soup on the kitchen table! Egusi Soup started life with Menagerie in January with reading at Sparks, premiered as a script-in-hand performance at Hotbed in July and in Oct

The best performances come from the three women. From her first entrance, high-heeled and business-suited, Karlina Grace offers us both the brittle shell that is the outward Anne and the desperate unhappiness within it. Quieter in her troubles but no less intense is Gracy Goldman as her sister, an acceptor of what life throws at her until she reaches her own point of no return. Taiwo Ajai-Lycett is the matriarch, a woman who can blend acceptance of what cannot be changed, not to mention possessing a shrewd sense of proper priorities, with an apparent country simplicity which annoys her daughters just as much as she enjoys displaying it. It’s a bravura performance which anchors the play. And the soup of the title? That really is revealed to have a very special flavour.

~ Anne Morley-Priestman, What’s On Stage.