| . | 12/06/2009
Fela!
By: Wickham Boyle
Sahr Ngaujah and company
Photo by Monique Carboni
Nigeria is a tough place: it is hauntingly beautiful yet violent and rough; it is sweet and innovative with a beat, energy and complicated history. Fela! now at the Eugene O’Neil Theater on Broadway attempts to parse and impart a portion of that history and much of the rhythm through the telling of famed musician Kuti Fela’s life.
From the moment you walk into the theater you are bombarded by the images of Africa. The band, Antibalas, bumps and blares with an Afro-Cuban beat, all bass and synchronized drums, trumpets and saxophone, the walls of the theater are lined with corrugated tin which punctuates the roads, covers the roofs and provides a canvas for many African artists. The show was conceived, directed and choreographed by the wonderful Bill T. Jones and the glorious cast sways and fills the aisles sharing his vision. Toto we are not on 49th Street any more, but in Lagos at the Club Shrine where Fela made his mark.
We learn that Fela’s mother Funmilayo was a leader in the movement for a populist government and she named him Fela, which means “he who shines with greatness” and it seems to have been prescient. Fela’s music became known worldwide and when he died, of complications from AIDS, in 1997, he had performed around the globe and still remained so beloved in his own Nigeria that throngs lined the streets in tribute.
This love from the people doesn’t negate the fact that the corrupt government arrested him over 200 times and swarmed his compound where he lived with his mother and many wives. They cruelly tossed his mother to her death from a second floor balcony and relegated the other women to well documented abject cruelties. These facts unfold during the musical.
This a tough landscape to navigate, a sort of artistic tightrope walk. We have the joyous music played by a slamming band and sung and acted by a luminous cast lead by Sahr Ngaujah and his prodigious talent as Fela himself. (in fact the role is so taxing that it is alternated with another equally great talent Kevin Mambo) There is the movement, dance leaps and staging all offered sensually by Bill T. Jones and his ensemble. All of this is pitch perfect and it highlights the fraught history of Nigeria. So as an audience we veer back and forth between standing in the aisles rocking our pelvis around an imaginary clock, engaging in the time honored tradition of call and response singing and being smacked by the stark words and imagery of torture and abuse.
But in the end we are entertained and perhaps educated. The audience is on its feet cheering at the curtain call for the incredible portrayal of Fela and for Lillias White who portrays Fela’s mother with grace and a voice that could reach the other side of Manhattan unmiked, also worth mention and an ovation is Saycon Sengbloh who plays Sandra, Fela’s main love interest. There is video projection, music that never stops and Marina Draghic’s costumes whose colors and patterns help transport us from dreary NYC winter to African sunshine.
Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 West 48 STreet
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