‘Decorated Soldier’: Power, love and the cost of justice
By Kabura Zakama
DECORATED Soldier by Charles Fuller is one of the most nuanced and emotionally layered stage productions I have encountered in recent times. Though it opens at a measured pace, the play soon gathers momentum and steadily pulls the audience into its moral and emotional universe. Before long, performers and spectators seem to occupy the same dramatic space. The atmosphere in the hall was charged, animated and deeply participatory.
This is the rare kind of play whose full impact arrives after the curtain falls. While many productions allow the audience to predict outcomes and interpret meaning as they unfold, Decorated Soldier resists such convenience. It draws viewers in emotionally first, then releases its deeper meanings later. One leaves the theatre affected, reflective and unsettled, in the best sense.
The script is tightly constructed and purposeful. The central performances, the Supreme Leader, General Jeff, Lieutenant General Roger and Stephanie Epiphany, carry both the emotional and philosophical weight of the play. The Supreme Leader emerges as a study in leadership restraint: a ruler who values loyalty and excellence enough to offer second chances, even when doubt and political pressure suggest otherwise. The play portrays God in the Supreme Leader, for it is he who appoints the Head of State, General Jeff, and dispenses second chances.
General Jeff is the emotional anchor of the play. He is portrayed with rare balance, gallant as a decorated soldier, tender as a lover and resolute as a judge. His devotion to Stephanie, stretching back to their secondary school days, renders him deeply human. Her repeated humiliations of him, culminating in her abandonment of him at the altar (despite the overtures of his delectable ADC, whom Stephanie referred to as ‘Iniquity’), add both tragedy and tension to his character. Yet, when justice finally demands its due, he sacrifices love for principle and proves that true heroism sometimes lies in painful choices.
Lieutenant General Roger enters as the embodiment of restless ambition, jealous, calculating and eager to overthrow Jeff. Surprisingly, the audience briefly warms to him when he confronts corrupt government officials. Yet his methods are dangerously summary, driven by ambition rather than justice. His execution of corrupt officials without due process ultimately seals his fate. Jeff’s sentencing of Roger underscores a central warning of the play: ambition without moral discipline is self-destructive.
Stephanie Epiphany is the most complex and provocative figure in the drama. She embodies corruption and practices manipulation with ruthless efficiency. She uses Jeff’s love to secure a ministerial position, abandons him at the altar to escape the rigorous demands of a First Lady and believes she can once again charm her way out of execution. But the play offers her no such escape. Jeff’s final decision to sentence her to death is the most devastating moment in the production, an uncompromising declaration that private love cannot be allowed to sabotage public justice.
The greatest strength of Decorated Soldier lies in its unpredictability. Just when the audience grows confident in its expectations, the narrative turns sharply in the opposite direction. Each twist provokes new waves of tension and emotional realignment. The final sentencing sequence, in particular, produced audible shock in the hall as audience assumptions were repeatedly overturned.
Ultimately, Decorated Soldier is not merely a political drama or a tragic romance. It is a searing meditation on leadership, power, ambition, love and the burden of moral choice. It confronts viewers with unsettling questions: How far should love bend before it breaks under the weight of public duty? Can justice remain pure when delivered by flawed humans? And what is the true cost of leadership? Long after the applause fades, the questions it raises continue to echo.
Decorated Soldier is not content to entertain, it insists on being wrestled with.
My only criticism is that the production was limited to a single-day staging. A longer run would have allowed a wider audience to experience and appreciate this remarkable performance.
* Dr. Zakama, a poet by calling and a literary activist with interests in mother languages, decolonisation and developmental publishing, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, is the promoter of Kairos Tablets & Scrolls Ltd
