While the public is patiently waiting for the newly refurbished Kenya National Theatre to finally reopen its doors – and rumour has it the event should take place before the end of August – professional thespians are not holding their breaths for news from the Kenya Cultural Centre or the Ministry of Culture as to when exactly that event will take place and who will perform that day.

Instead, local theatre groups have learned to adapt to a life without a functioning national theatre. They have been performing regularly either at the Alliance Francaise, Phoenix Players Theatre, the small stage at the Kenya Cultural Centre or even at the Louis Leakey Auditorium of the Nairobi National Museum.

This past weekend at the Alliance Francaise, Fanaka Arts Theatre staged the outrageously funny Kikuyu comedy Ruga Njite (You Cook, I Pour). And this weekend at Kenya Cultural Centre’s Little Theatre, Johari Entertainment is staging another Kikuyu comedy called Cabi Yene (Someone Else’s Key) starting tonight.

Both shows are delightful social satires on situations that any number of Kenyans might find themselves in the middle of; starting from the premise that society is in a state of flux and many longstanding traditions have either been forgotten or revised.

For instance, in Ruga Njite, two married men, General (Chege Muthamaki) and Kanyare (Mundo Particular) took flight from their spouses sometime back. They unceremoniously fled to Naivasha where they opened a hotel and restaurant and might have lived happily thereafter without any sense of responsibility to their families.

The problem arises when a lovely young girl (Patricia Wangechi) arrives at the hotel and asks for a job. It turns out she’s General’s granddaughter, but before that is revealed General gets the hots for her and wants to have his way with her.

The even bigger problem comes when his wife (Fidelis Nyambura) shows up having heard her granddaughter was spotted in town. She arrives at the hotel intent on taking the girl home. The wife recognises her spouse despite the decades that have intervened and you can imagine what sort of spontaneous combustion explodes from there.

What makes Ruga Njite such a crowd pleaser is the cast, all of whom are brilliant comedians, and all the running punch lines that keep audiences literally in stitches, laughing at jokes that were often “adult” and naughty.

The most outrageous character of all is General’s wife who learned long ago to live well without her spouse. She’s a granny who’s young at heart and refuses to “act her age”.

Johari’s Cabi Yene also explores a manifestation of Kenyan society in flux. Specifically it looks at children gone wild and how the blame game, pinning the whole problem on parents, is not the end of the story. The issues addressed are often heart-wrenching when the problem of misbehaving youth gets out of control.

The question was the same one that the General and Kanyare asked themselves in Ruga Njite. Joe Kinyua raises the issue at Phoenix, but obviously comes up with a different answer.