The Effects of Anticlimax on an Audience

Anticlimax is a plague every serious creative avoids with so much  consciousness. Of course, the main aim of writing a book or creating a play is to project an idea (for consideration) into 

the minds of the audience that have become an integral part of the game from the beginning to the end but when things go awry, action dies, energy dies, expectations fly out of the window and the emotions that have been built dry up 

completely and the aim is not achieved.

For what it’s worth, anticlimax can be one of many things in a work of art. First of, when it is set on a wrong threshold, it becomes a terrible feature which is usually evident in a curve that is supposed to act as comic relief when tension is high or an event designed to take the audience back in time or have a peep into the future. Now, this threshold is what I call ‘oversabi’. ‘Oversabi’ is a deliberate attempt made by an actor to over-impress an audience by trying too hard. This is more like a recurring thing with a handful of actors that mostly play 

comic roles. It is not out of place for writers like Doris Ariole to get trapped in this web too. In She Is, she tries to douse the tension twice. The first one is successful but the second is a disaster because she unnecessarily drags the 

action to the point where Tobias (Ime Bishop), the gatekeeper is asked to kneel and raise his hands like a school kid. Haba! 

Another is its destructive tendency. It’s usually amazing when a creative deliberately withholds information so the audience could put the pieces together from actions that follow. However, when there is a complete shift in the process, their expectations are not just crushed, 

they become too mentally alert to criticize rather than enjoy every scene that 

follows. This shift could be anywhere in a story: beginning, middle or end. So if a story opens with an action scene, the audience expects other scenes to follow-up on the impression. I remember how much we pressed our father, when we were kids, to buy Olusegun Akinremi’s (a.k.a Chief Kanran) Are Ona Kankanfo movie. A lot had been said about it and the 

jingles were fabulous. One day, Dad came home with a copy and we were really glad. Straight to the video player, one impatient hand 

tucked it in while the rest of us sat to watch. From the beginning, a lot h a p p e n e d, tension rose, expectations got high too but all we wanted was to see the Are (Karan) himself fight with his army. Omo, we waited gan oh! Nothing happened except his eventual suicide in the end.

The irony of anticlimax is that it could be really useful if skillfully applied to drive suspense such 

that it’ll look like a good plan on the part of a creative. In Iya Afin, a 2018 production of Jaylex Aesthetics, we see how an action is terminated with a ‘comic distraction’ and suspense is sustained at the point where Afini (Tolu Fabure) 

attempts suicide but is ridiculed by his siblings instead. With this singular act, he changes his mind and walks away angrily.Roshane De Silva says ‘We are never fully satisfied with our work. We always feel that we can do better and that our best piece is yet to be written’. Hence, ‘When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done’ (Stephen King). It is therefore important to 

know that anticlimax is still another way of making an audience wait for more, no matter the kind of effect it does produce in a story, movie or play.

By Enoh Umoh

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