Review by Matt Chelsea

From a pure stoner standpoint, the musical Fela! offers a rare opportunity for an audience to catch a buzz during a Broadway show.

Early in the first act, co-star Kevin Mambo, who portrays the Nigerian musician and revolutionary Fela Anikulapo Kuti, smokes a large joint and tells the crowd, "You all look a lot more beautiful now."

Even without the help of the intoxicating herb, Bill T. Jones' Fela! will get you high on its horn-heavy music by Antibalas and joyous African dancing.

While Jamaica boasted Bob Marley and the U.S. had protest singers like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, Nigeria produced Fela Kuti, a fearless musical voice who opposed the corrupt military regimes running the oil-rich country.

As you walk into the Eugene O’Neill Theater, spectators are treated to a reproduction of Fela’s Lagos nightclub, the Shrine (decorated with posters, flags and strings of bare light bulbs), which housed his extravaganzas of dance and layered Afrobeat music.

When Fela (Mambo and Sahr Ngaujah share the role) takes the stage, he explains how he left Nigeria to go to college in London, shifted his focus to music (absorbing everything from James Brown to Frank Sinatra) and was inspired by the Black Power movement in the U.S. before returning to face repression at home.

Along the way, Fela performs one of his greatest hits, "Zombie," and elaborates on his love of music, women and weed, and his attempt to run for president, which the government scuttled. When police threaten him with 10 years in jail after planting a joint at his club, Fela eats the evidence and is subsequently set free.

The show picks up more steam as Fela recants the story of his mother’s death in 1977 at the hands of the police. He embarks on a mystical trip to the spirit world, where his mother, an activist who battled for women’s rights, tells him to stay in Nigeria and fight for freedom. As Fela places her coffin on the steps of the government headquarters, other cast members lay coffins down as well. (One casket bears the name of Sean Bell, an unarmed African-American man killed by police in New York just three years ago. Invoking Bell's name suggests that the repression Fela fought against in Nigeria often manifests itself here in the U.S. and all over the world.)

If you can't make it to New York for this dazzling production, Fela Kuti's life will soon light up movie theaters. Steve McQueen is currently directing a separate biography of Fela that's not based on Jones' marijuana-friendly musical.

Watch Fela! trailer here

Photo by Monique Carboni

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