Anti-Colonialism on Broadway

Fela! on Broadway

Despite a babysitter snafu, I managed to attend Fela!, playing at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, on Saturday night. And boy am I glad I did. Directed by the choreographer Bill T. Jones, the show, about the life of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo–Kuti, features the tightest band this side of James Brown and an ensemble of dancers whose performances defy all notions of anatomy and gravity. The magnetic Sahr Ngaujah, who barely leaves the stage, performed the role of Fela (he alternates the role with Kevin Mambo). The scenic design and projections are fantastically layered and effective, and together with the ensemble members’ frequent sojourns into the aisles, break down the proscenium and draw the audience into the action. But what is most remarkable about Fela! is that this superb showmanship is deployed in the service of a story that encompasses anti-colonial politics, the corrupting influences of international corporations, black nationalism, the brutality of repressive Nigerian dictatorships, and African spirit worship. The Lion King it ain’t.

Kuti, the son of an Anglican minister father and anti-colonial activist mother, melded African rhythms with the western pop and jazz music he encountered as a medical student in London in the late 1950s to create Afrobeat, an infectious world music style that gave him international recognition. He was also an outspoken critic of several repressive Nigerian governments, which landed him in jail on more than 200 occasions. If the idea of a sequence describing and re-enacting a stay in a Nigerian prison seems like a cruel joke of an idea in a Broadway musical, rest assured that in Fela! it is not.

Fela was a talented, brave, and complicated man, and in the service of narrative drive the show inevitably flattens out his story in places and suggests but does not dwell on some of his less heroic characteristics. But it conveys so much that will be new to most American audiences, in such a compelling theatrical experience, that I am both dazed at the thought that it made it to Broadway at all and optimistic that it will settle in for a successful run there.

Last 5 posts by Ellen Noonan

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