Fela! Broadway Reviews

The music and dancing are so good that if 'Fela!' had been a half-hour shorter, I wouldn't have been overly troubled by its shapelessness. Alas, it plays for 2½ hours, and by the time the festivities draw to a close, you'll feel as though you'd ling...

The music and dancing are so good that if 'Fela!' had been a half-hour shorter, I wouldn't have been overly troubled by its shapelessness. Alas, it plays for 2½ hours, and by the time the festivities draw to a close, you'll feel as though you'd lingered too long at a Thanksgiving table piled high with goodies. Even so, 'Fela!' is tremendous fun, and anyone with curious ears and an eye for first-class dancing won't want to miss it.

Ngauhah -- onstage for nearly every minute of the 2 1/2-hour show -- displays endless reserves of charisma, sex appeal and musical talent, making his stage reincarnation of a genuine superstar, always a difficult task, more than credible. (Kevin Mamb...

Ngauhah -- onstage for nearly every minute of the 2 1/2-hour show -- displays endless reserves of charisma, sex appeal and musical talent, making his stage reincarnation of a genuine superstar, always a difficult task, more than credible. (Kevin Mambo plays the role at matinee performances.) This is a performance that will surely come into play come awards season. The show's raison d'etre is the music, ferociously performed by Antibalas, a Brooklyn-based band. While most of it will be new to all but African music enthusiasts, some of the tunes, such as the international hit 'Zombie,' will be familiar to clubgoers. Jones, here making his stage directorial debut, has provided a seamlessly fluid production. Not surprisingly, his choreography, including some amusing audience participation on the sexually tinged 'Originality/Yellow Fever,' is outstanding and beautifully performed by the hardworking, sexy ensemble.

Fela! certainly isn't meant to be a complete portrait of its title character. The action of the show takes place before the man dismissed AIDS as a myth (he eventually died from it) and his practice of polygamy (he married 27 women at once) is treate...

Fela! certainly isn't meant to be a complete portrait of its title character. The action of the show takes place before the man dismissed AIDS as a myth (he eventually died from it) and his practice of polygamy (he married 27 women at once) is treated more like nightclub shtick than fact. But the music radiates and Jones and his crew never allow Fela! to be less than visually entrancing. Set and costume designer Marina Draghici turns the entire theatre into The Afrika Shrine with colorful murals and portraits painted on the walls and dresses the cast in an appealing mixture of traditional and 1970's contemporary. Robert Wierzel's lights are appropriately clubby and Peter Nigrini's videos nicely accent key moments. Most importantly, the kinetic force of the hard-working dancers and the talented star make Fela! a worthy celebration.

For all the fierce enthusiasm that Ngaujah brings to the evening (presumably equaled by Kevin Mambo, who plays the strenuous role at selected performances), the end result still seems scattershot and disconnected, a scrapbook with high points rather ...

For all the fierce enthusiasm that Ngaujah brings to the evening (presumably equaled by Kevin Mambo, who plays the strenuous role at selected performances), the end result still seems scattershot and disconnected, a scrapbook with high points rather than a theatrical event.

There are two great things in it. One is Sahr Ngaujah, the man who, for most of the week, plays Fela. How did the producers find a performer who matched Fela in charm, wit, and insolence? They must have held a hundred auditions. In some respects, Nga...

There are two great things in it. One is Sahr Ngaujah, the man who, for most of the week, plays Fela. How did the producers find a performer who matched Fela in charm, wit, and insolence? They must have held a hundred auditions. In some respects, Ngaujah may actually be better than Fela. You can see a lot of Fela clips on YouTube. He is very charismatic, but Ngaujah seems more so, not to speak of the fact that he has all his teeth... The second glory of “Fela!” is the dancing, created by Bill T. Jones. It’s hard to make West African dance look bad—this is one of the great dance cultures of the world—but oh, how good Jones and the dancers, more than half of them American-born (the others are African or Caribbean), have made it look.

Despite a bigger budget and some reshaping, the show is still too long and challenging for many of those with more traditional tastes. But 'Fela!' speaks to Broadway’s next generation, whose embrace of the work gives hope for the theater’s future...

Despite a bigger budget and some reshaping, the show is still too long and challenging for many of those with more traditional tastes. But 'Fela!' speaks to Broadway’s next generation, whose embrace of the work gives hope for the theater’s future.

Broadway has never before witnessed a musical quite like 'Fela!' — an explosive mix of catchy Afrobeat rhythms, wild, sexy dancing and raw bio-dramatics — and while its unique charms certainly are powerful, one frankly wonders whether this unusua...

Broadway has never before witnessed a musical quite like 'Fela!' — an explosive mix of catchy Afrobeat rhythms, wild, sexy dancing and raw bio-dramatics — and while its unique charms certainly are powerful, one frankly wonders whether this unusual show will catch on with the mainstream public.

There should be dancing in the streets. When you leave the Eugene O’Neill Theater after a performance of “Fela!,” it comes as a shock that the people on the sidewalks are merely walking. Why aren’t they gyrating, swaying, vibrating, in thrall...

There should be dancing in the streets. When you leave the Eugene O’Neill Theater after a performance of “Fela!,” it comes as a shock that the people on the sidewalks are merely walking. Why aren’t they gyrating, swaying, vibrating, in thrall to the force field that you have been living in so ecstatically for the past couple of hours?

Directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, the biography is at its most thrilling when it blurs the line between life and art, performers and viewers. A pedagogical deconstruction of Afrobeat's musical components turns into a party, and the show is...

Directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, the biography is at its most thrilling when it blurs the line between life and art, performers and viewers. A pedagogical deconstruction of Afrobeat's musical components turns into a party, and the show is so cocky that it doesn't even save a big audience-participation number for the finale: It comes half an hour in. It's a tough act to keep up, and 'Fela!' does struggle after intermission.

The modern-dance giant Bill T. Jones has directed and choreographed. It is his first outing as a theater director and his second as a Broadway choreographer (following the hit repressed-German-teens-singing-indie-rock musical Spring Awakening). He cr...

The modern-dance giant Bill T. Jones has directed and choreographed. It is his first outing as a theater director and his second as a Broadway choreographer (following the hit repressed-German-teens-singing-indie-rock musical Spring Awakening). He creates a dizzying party onstage, giving his performers athletic, frenzied, propulsive and suggestively butt-centric dances. Catwalks extend into the orchestra seats, and dancers regularly head into the aisles. (Set designer Marina Draghici has extended the poster-covered corrugated steel that marks the walls of the Shrine into the house, too, turning the entire theater into the club.)

The 2 1/2 hours, cut from off-Broadway’s three, cannot tell the whole story. There is some glossing over; we never, for example, learn how Fela incurred AIDS. But there are Fela’s music and Jones’s equally matchless dances, uniquely combining e...

The 2 1/2 hours, cut from off-Broadway’s three, cannot tell the whole story. There is some glossing over; we never, for example, learn how Fela incurred AIDS. But there are Fela’s music and Jones’s equally matchless dances, uniquely combining earthiness with flight, dynamics with delicacy and drive to equal, if not surpass, Olympian ideals.

As an evening’s entertainment, Fela! is without peer: two and a half hours of electrifying music, astonishing dancing, and virtuosic stagecraft, anchored by a star turn as charismatic, and as taxing, as I’ve ever seen on Broadway. How charismatic...

As an evening’s entertainment, Fela! is without peer: two and a half hours of electrifying music, astonishing dancing, and virtuosic stagecraft, anchored by a star turn as charismatic, and as taxing, as I’ve ever seen on Broadway. How charismatic? Fela’s a ringmaster, a bandleader, and the cult guru of the Shrine. And how taxing? He rarely leaves the stage, singing and dancing and joking like a demon—oh, and visiting his dead mother in the underworld. It’s draining enough that two actors alternate the role.

Although Jones proved in 2006’s Spring Awakening that he could play the Broadway game, adapting his modern-dance aesthetic to musical storytelling (and garnering a Tony), who knew he was this much of a showman? Working with book cowriter Jim Lewis,...

Although Jones proved in 2006’s Spring Awakening that he could play the Broadway game, adapting his modern-dance aesthetic to musical storytelling (and garnering a Tony), who knew he was this much of a showman? Working with book cowriter Jim Lewis, a fierce dancing corps and the sexy, commanding Ngaujah, Jones has orchestrated a soul-scorching mash-up of pounding African dance, political protest and intoxicating Afrobeat—the style Kuti pioneered, which mixes funk, jazz and drumming. Fela! is more than a musical; it’s an ecstatic phenomenon.

Will the average Broadway matinee lady be comfortable participating in a practical demonstration of how to tell time with her ass? That's exactly what takes place in 'The Clock,' a particularly frisky sequence of 'Fela!' in which the entire audience ...

Will the average Broadway matinee lady be comfortable participating in a practical demonstration of how to tell time with her ass? That's exactly what takes place in 'The Clock,' a particularly frisky sequence of 'Fela!' in which the entire audience is on its feet learning from the able-bodied dance corps what Swiss-movement booty work is all about. And it's just one of countless ways in which Bill T. Jones' wildly loose-limbed journey into the throbbing heart of Afrobeat breaks bold new ground in musical theater.

Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones has shaped a stirring production around Kuti's outsize personality and key events from his rebellious, unconventional life, set to the percussive Afrobeat music Kuti invented. The result is 'Fela!,' a terrif...

Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones has shaped a stirring production around Kuti's outsize personality and key events from his rebellious, unconventional life, set to the percussive Afrobeat music Kuti invented. The result is 'Fela!,' a terrific dance party of a musical, an exuberant celebration that also drives home a spirited message of human resilience.