Fela, musician, composer, activist

I spent this afternoon at the Mahaiwe Theatre in Great Barrington at the invitation of my friends Ben and Susie. The Mahaiwe is a 1905 theatre that has been beautifully restored in every aspect except the heating. On this frigid January afternoon I had to put my outside coat back on at the intermission to keep my teeth from chattering.

The whole purpose of this trip was to see the live telecast from London of Fela, a musical theatre piece presented by the English National Theatre, which had been presented in New York City and around the world earlier. It is based on the tragic and frustrating life of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who was a Nigerian multi-instrument musician and composer, pioneer of afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick. (Wikipedia-source)

Born in 1938 into a family where his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a feminist activist, and his father, Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, was a protestant minister, he went to London to study medicine in 1958 but studied music instead at the Trinity College of Music. He later went to Ghana to find new musical direction and was the inventor of 'afrobeat'.

This play, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, is a musical journey through his life as a musician and as an activist. Coming to the United States in 1969, he became influenced by the 'Black Panther Movement', which greatly influenced his views on life and on freedom.

This play with music begins before it begins, with a sort of 'Hello Symphony'. Actors and musicians are on stage in the gloom doing various things including speaking, singing quietly, and playing various instruments before the action actually begins.

Since there is no curtain for the stage, there is nothing to go up to signify the play is on. But the real action finally begins. The person portraying Fela, a lithe, muscular young man, played and sang the title role with incredible energy and stamina. I have never seen anyone sweat this much on stage since I witnessed Elliot Gould's Broadway début ( with his soon-to-be wife, Barbra Streisand in I can get it for you Wholesale) at which time sweat poured off him every time he moved. This is often called 'Flop-Sweat!. It is a danger to your co-actors. In this case, I don't think it was flop-sweat; simply the result of incredible physical and emotional energy being released. This part demands that the title character is on stage the entire time, singing, dancing, emoting, leaping about, all of which this man did wonderfully well. He must lose five pounds at every performance.

To me, the first act went on too long, in spite of the eleven Tonies it achieved on Broadway. The incessant 'afrobeat' music after a while becomes like the Japanese 'Water Torture Technique'. I would have confessed to almost anything to have it stop. A large cast of beautiful and talented dancers, who occasionally sing, surrounded the star. But he is the steel at the center of this production.

In the Interval, as the British would have it, nothing really stopped. Someone was playing the same five notes on a finger harp for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Whew! Thank you, John Adams. There nearly went my sanity. As you can tell, I have a short fuse when it comes to mindless repetition of the same few notes.

The second act was more emotionally connective for me, at any rate, and not as frenetic as the first act. The woman who sang the part of Fela's mother has an extraordinary voice and an unbelievable vocal range- (see Yma Sumac!) This act detailed the beatings and imprisonment that Fela endured as an activist (he attempted to run, unsuccessfully, for President of Nigeria) in his struggle for a free country. His mother was defenestrated and mortally injured during this period. The second act goes into a 'Dream' sequence in which his ghostly mother sings an unbelievably beautiful aria with about a four octave range!

All in all this was an energetic afternoon watching a musical idiom that is not exactly my cup of tea, but which, eventually, with the help of this amazing cast, drew me into the pathos of this story.

At the end, Bill T. Jones, bare from the waist up, lept onto the stage and proved that he can still do something besides choreograph. You should probably see this!