This is the play that got Ngugi wa Thiong'o arrested and held with no charges for a year. Rich with the songs and rhythms of the African people, it is easy to see how a performance of this play could stir people to action. The setting is contemporary neo-colonial Kenya, where a rigid line is drawn between two sets of characters: the exploited and the exploiters. Kiguunda and his wife Wangeci are farm laborers who are exploited by Ahab Kioi Wa Kanoru and his wife Jezebel. In addition to losing their land, the laborers also have to deal with a daughter who is bucking tradition and asserting her independence from her parents. It is her statement that "I will marry when I want" instead of when her parents want her to do so. This conflict is further added to economic and religious conflict throughout the play, but Ngugi's point, as always, is that the masses must unite against the powers that be rather than fight amongst themselves.

"Entirely African in its design, I Will Marry When I Want represents the enactment of Dedan Kimathi's teaching: 'unite, drive out the enemy and control your own riches, enjoy the fruit of your sweat.' Ngugi's success as a dramatist is exemplified by the enthusiastic but violent reactions of audiences attending the first few performances before the government banned the play and detained Ngugi. . . . Few playwrights in the history of drama have suffered so for their power to move an audience to action." --Michael Loudon in Critical Survey of Drama, rev. ed., 1994, vol. 5, p. 1722.

Ngugi's own reaction to the performance of the play:
"I saw how the people had appropriated the text. . . so that the play which was finally put on. . . was a far cry from the tentative awkward efforts originally put together by Ngugi and myself. I felt one with the people. I shared in their rediscovery of their collective strength and abilities, and in their joyous feeling that they could accomplish anything." --from Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (London, 1981) p. 78.

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