"Fela!' at Academy of Music (2nd review)

The Kimmel Center's 2011-12 Broadway series includes a jukebox musical (Rain, based on the music of the Beatles) and a dramatic musical with a social message and amazing dancing (West Side Story). A third offering, Fela!, combines the two.

Like jukebox musicals, it's based on the music of a single artist, in this case Nigerian Fela Kuti. His life story provides the social message: Kuti was not just a musician but also an activist who was arrested more than 200 times for his very public criticisms of Nigeria's corrupt government.

Kimmel subscribers no doubt suspected they were in for something more than a traditional musical when they entered the auditorium of the Academy of Music. The curtain was up, revealing a set consisting of scaffolding and political posters. The proscenium's red-and-gold rococo decor was partially concealed by video screens displaying newspaper headlines.

Performers gathered casually on stage; a drummer started a beat, and an electric guitarist joined in; dancers began to warm up, displaying phenomenal control of their hips and buttocks. Other performers sauntered up through the audience and joined the milling activity on stage. Then the show began.

Elvis as political activist

The time is the late '70s, shortly after the death of Fela's revered mother Funmilayo (Melanie Marshall), and the place is his nightclub in Lagos. Fela (Adesola Osakalumi ) bounds on stage, clad in a baby-blue jumpsuit worthy of Elvis, and begins to tell us his story.

Its first element is Afropop music, which Fela originated by blending Western R & B, funk and jazz with traditional Yoruba chants and rhythms. The other is political consciousness, which Fela encountered in the U.S. in the '60s, most importantly through his lover, Sandra (Paulette Ivory).

Fela's monologue ties together the singing and dancing while also recreating what really happened at the club— a mix of music and consciousness-raising. The Fela! audience is treated like patrons in the nightclub— exhorted to get up and dance at one point, and to participate in call and response singing at another. Throughout the evening, visuals (film clips, newspaper headlines, song lyrics) projected onto multiple screens around the stage provide explanation and context.

Leaving at intermission

More than a few audience members left at intermission. They might have been season subscribers bothered by the suggestiveness of the dancing on stage (or the emphasis on hip thrusts in the dance-along portion), or by Fela's radical politics, profanity or unabashed hedonism (having sex and smoking dope were two of his favorite pastimes). Who knows?

But if folks in the audience found the first act outside their comfort zone, it's just as well they left: The second act dealt with Fela's embrace of polygamy, and, more darkly, a police raid that culminated in the rape and torture of Fela and his followers.

For those of us in the audience who knew in advance who Fela Kuti was, though, the spectacle was exhilarating. The format created by choreographer/director/co-author Bill T. Jones (winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant) effectively conveyed not only the facts of Fela's life but its significance, as well as the context of his times, both musically and politically.

Ancestor worship

At the same time, the adulatory presentation of Fela's character glosses over his misogyny, despite his near-worship of his mother (you don't have to be Catholic to succumb to Madonna/whore dualism).

Other complexities, such as Fela's attitude toward religion— he was the son and grandson of Protestant ministers but turned to the ancestor worship of the Yoruba— are at least hinted at. The hagiographic tenor of the portrayal, however, suggests why more than a million people attended Fela's 1997 funeral.

The success of the show thus rests on the actor playing Fela. Osakalumi fully embodies Fela's charm, conviction, drive, passion, hedonism and humor in a powerful performance. Marshall's regal presence and operatic-tinged singing convey both the distance and devotion of Fela's relationship with his mother. The band kicked butt, and the dance ensemble transformed itself as necessary to fill in miscellaneous roles, showing incredible physical power and control throughout.

So, if your idea of a musical with a political story is The Sound of Music, you'll find Fela! disconcerting in the extreme. But for those of us who like a musical with sharper edges, this is, most emphatically, the sort of thing we like.♦


To read another review by Steve Cohen, click here.