Broadway Spotlight: Fela!

Fela! is not a typical musical. Theater people like to say things like that, and sometimes they're right. But Fela! is so remarkably different from any other Broadway performance that it is truly unprecedented. In fact, the term "musical" doesn't even begin to describe this spectacle.

At the Eugene O'Neill Theater the audience is transported back to 1978. At a club in Lagos called The Shrine, Fela Kuti performs for the final time. He emerges, clad in a turquoise leather suit, surrounded by an entourage of Nigerian women gyrating, vibrating and grooving around the artist. An enthusiastic Fela (Kevin Mambo) queues the band and he croons about political strife in Africa and activism. Like Fela's music — a mix of American jazz, African beats, Cuban mambos, James Brown soul and "nyansh," Kuti funk — Fela! is an amalgamation of all types of performances.

Toward the beginning of the performance, Kuti gets the audience involved. It's a party as he lights a joint onstage and teaches everyone how to rotate their hips like a clock. But most are already engaged; the theater is immediately welcoming with murals and banners of civil rights figures, political cartoons and headlines, as well as a tie-dyed décor.

The musical itself is a journey of hedonistic Kuti's life as he studies music in England, fights for rights both in Africa and the United States, smokes dope with relish, and marries 27 women simultaneously (whom he calls his Queens). The musical is a concert, dance number, collage of images, political diatribe and festivity, all packed into two and a half hours.

For all its innovation, Fela! fits the flexible and ever-evolving tradition of the Broadway musical. Its wide-ranged components juxtaposed startling images of Nigerian military dictators and civilian mug shots with the sounds of Kuti's vivacious Afrobeat. Mambo is an imperious Fela, despite emotional outbursts of irreverence and anger.

At the final acts of the performance, the dancers snake through the theater aisles, spreading the spirit of unbroken endurance and unbridled passion only conjured at protests and rallies. Such political fervor is not exactly normal for a Broadway musical, but it's merely one way of many that Fela! breaks the mold.