Plays
Fela!, the Musical
Performing at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York
The music icon Fela Anikupalo Kuti was the unlikely culmination of generations of talent and courage. His grandfather, Jay Jay, was a classical musician with an international reputation. His father was a devout man-of-the-cloth and the strict headmaster of a high school. His mother, Funmilayo, organized a successful women’s movement in Nigeria, stood firm in the face of the colonial authorities, and traveled the world — even meeting Mao Zedong in China during the height of Mao’s cult of personality.
Fela grew up as Nigeria was loosening its colonial shackles, but he soon discovered that colonialism was replaced by equally cruel military dictatorships at the end of British rule in 1960. These many influences led Fela to become a successful band leader and social reformer. He would eventually become so incensed by the rampant corruption that he declared his own independent republic of Kalakuta and ran for president. This made him an easy target for Nigerian leadership.
Fela never cut a deal with a major record label because he was afraid to dilute his message. He also didn’t write any endearing love songs like Bob Marley, so his pill was tougher to swallow.
Fela’s story is larger than life, both too beautiful and too awful to imagine, and that is why it is fit for a musical. The new musical Fela! puts a celebratory spin on the musician’s immensely complex personality.
If you consider yourself young and drifting from the left, you will find Greg Keller’s new one-act play deeply unsettling. This probing production at the Cherry Lane Theatre examines the relationship of two old friends in Park Slope, Brooklyn as they wrestle with the choices they’ve made and the terror that accompanies personal and political transformation.
Read the full review here.
French father-son team Jacques and Olivier Treiner premiered a new translation of their prize-winning play Fission at the Art of Science Reading Series. Staged in an airy hall of the CUNY Graduate Center, the play depicted the race to create an atomic bomb on both sides of the Atlantic. Fission is as much a celebration of scientific imagination as it is an examination of the ethical issues of one of the most significant inventions of the twentieth century.
Click here for the full review.
Mary Stuart
Written by Friedrich Schiller
Adopted by Peter Oswald
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Starring: Janet McTeer, Harriet Walter, Brian Murray, Chandler Williams
Broadhurst Theatre, New York
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Imagine if Alberto Fujimori had fled Peru to Japan and then tried to become Prime Minister. What would Prime Minister Aso do with him? Serve him sencha tea?
This seems an absurd scenario today (although Fujimori did flee Peru after being accused of human rights violations), but in 16th century England anything was possible. Throw in sex and a few bloodlines, and there you go.
Frierdrich Schiller’s 1800 play Mary Stuart is set shortly after Henry VIII beheaded several of his wives and created his own Church. Queen Mary Stuart, a Catholic, has fled Scotland after being ousted from the throne by Protestants and her half-brother. She has sought asylum in England and the protection of Queen Elizabeth I. The problem is that she has also asserted a claim to the English throne. Several assassination attempts against Queen Elizabeth I have implicated her, and the once proud and passionate Mary Queen of Scots has lived for two decades under close guard in isolated castles.
Mary Stuart is a new translation from the German original and Phyllida Lloyd’s production is also new. There is a freshness about the set — not least because of the spring rain that falls upon the stage — and the dialogue comes across as nuanced and insightful. I thought, while listening to the eloquent soliloquies, that Shakespeare may have written like this if he was alive today, instead of pottering about in his Elizabethan drawl. (What kid nowadays does not use the glossary on the verso page of Macbeth?) It is little surprise that translator Peter Oswald was once a writer in residence at Shakespeare’s Globe. I also found it very enjoyable that the lords and knights don modern business suits, while the leading actresses wear stylized period dress. We are at once watching boardroom and royal court, bridging the centuries.
Read the full review here.
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