Fela!

Fela Anikulapo Kuti was an amazing man.  Not everything he did was great, but his sheer effort, drive, and breathless talent made him an icon, both in the music industry as he popularized an afro-beat sound and in the Nigerian political movement.  He found more success in the former, but it was his leadership and visibility in his nation’s political struggle that made him a legend.

Fela was a fascinating person, and elements of his life are brought to the stage in the eponymous named Fela!  Deconstructed from a traditional music, the energy, excitement, and emotion you hope for from a musical are all up on the stage (and, at times, in the aisles).  There’s so much energy, in fact, there have been casting issues.  When the show ran Off-Broadway, there was only a single lead in the title role.  Transferring uptown, the producers decided that rather than wear out the lead, they would alternate actors.  There have been a few show cancellations due to actor injuries, likely based on the insane dancing that takes place.

And what dancing there is.  More than any vocal performance (with all due respect to the three leads), the real star of the show is Director/Choreographer Bill T. Jones’s frenetic & dynamic choreography.  A tremendous ensemble radiates, gyrates & emulates the energy one would expect from Kuti’s magnificent music.  The afro-beat tracks brought out in the show are meant to showcase the emotional journey of sorts that Fela was on.

And the performances given are quite excellent.  I saw Kevin Mambo, not the primary Fela Sahr Ngaujah, and he gave an emotionally voracious performance.  His teeming anger, joy, and frustration were well maintained, and he was dynamic.  His acting was well-measured, and I wondered how far apart the two split performers style really is.  Apparently, Ngaujah is a slightly better singer & dancer (though Mambo is no slouch by any stretch) and Mambo is a slightly better dramatic presence.  Hard to tell, but I would love to see the alternate just to have a frame of reference.

The other two leads, as Fela’s mother and one of his primary wives, respectively, are played by Lillias White and Saycon Sengbloh.  White is someone I’ve seen before, and she more than ably takes on the role of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who was a feminist icon in Africa.  It seemed she’s not fully mic’ed, since her voice really doesn’t need much amplification (lady can knock down a house) and she was occasionally hard to hear.  I’m hoping they used a restrained mic so she wouldn’t blow it out.  Her big 11 o’clock number, Rain, is a show-stopper – musically, dramatically, and vocally.

Sengbloh is a find.  She appears almost angelically and with a gorgeous, delicate voice that cuts through the theatre.  Its a shame that her role almost disappears, since she really does excel and hold the audience’s attention.  I’d love to see her take on a larger role to see how much range she has.  She was a signed recording artist (as “Saycon”), but she gives such an elegant performance here as the fiery radical Sandra Isadore, that she really can be a mainstage star.  Apparently she’s been on Broadway in both replacement and supporting roles and while I’ve likely seen here, here she really stands out.

The rest of the cast are interchangeable, yet dynamic.  The choreography is meant to highlight their skills, and as Ben Brantley said, this is no standard chorus line.  Jones is an excellent choreographer, and here he takes full advantage of the musical style to accentuate his natural modern style of dance.

The music is also amazing.  If you’re not familiar with Fela’s music, get familiar.  Afro- beat is an electric blend of rock, funk, soul, jazz, Latin rhythms and traditional African musical elements.  In fact, rather than rely on a traditional band, the show, in true Off-Broadway development fashion, brought Antibalas, a Brooklyn Afro-beat band in to be the show’s band.  And they do more than justice here, birthing life into music that deserves a wider American audience.

As for the show itself, well, its a better theatrical experience than a musical.  It owes a debt to Passing Strange for that show’s deconstruction of a traditional musical while leveraging all of a musical’s elements.  Here the storytelling is a bit spare, and often confusing.  For example, Sandra ignites Fela’s political edge, but there’s no explanation that they got married and she joined him back in Nigeria.  And the show basically glosses over the fact that Fela had twenty-seven wives during his compound era.  Its not a criticism of Fela that he lived polygamously, but the fact that his compound lifestyle wasn’t entirely articulated is a fault of Jim Lewis’s book.

I would have preferred a bit more detail on Fela’s life overall, and to me, the show suffers a bit for that.  In fact, I went home and Wikipedia’d Fela to find out more about him, his experiences, and the Nigerian political movement he lead.  One major regret, though, is that the Playbill didn’t have a bit of Fela’s history.  I’ve been to other shows with historical contexts, and many of them had a half page or so about the subject.  It would have been great to have that here, since I knew a bit about Fela going in, and still wanted to learn much more.  And buy his music.

This isn’t to say the show itself isn’t a joy.  It is.  Its an experience, and a worthy one.  I’m glad to have seen it, and would love to see it again, tempered by my storytelling expectations.  Tickets are fairly easy to come by, so get some & go.  Dance the night away, filled with joy, love, desire, anger, politics, and greatness.

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