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The corridors of
Olivier Hall of The National Theatre, South Bank, London was crowded on
the evening of November 16, when I arrived just minutes short of the
start of the musical, Fela!. It was the opening night of the critically
acclaimed Broadway production, which had already bagged three Tony
awards and was much talked about in international thespian circles.

It is not often
that an African personality is celebrated and chosen as a subject for
western theatre; therefore the excitement was palpable as this evening
marked its next step: a debut in London’s Theatreland – and the British
media were out in their numbers to appraise this curious collaboration
of American stagecraft and African music.

Songs by Fela
played softly from hidden speakers around the busy corridors of the
hall, seducing us to a state of ecstatic anticipation. The songs
interrupted frequently by recorded voice simulations of Fela urging
that the motley audience take their seats as the show was set to begin.
We finally made our way from the small talk, the bars and the sales
stalls offering Fela merchandise and trickled to our seats.

The Olivier had
transmuted into a world of colours, symbols and images. Grabbing
attention high up on the right wing of the hall was a giant portrait of
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Fela’s mother. The stall terraces were draped
with flags of various African countries. The stage background was a
blown up image of Kalakuta Republic, while the foreground paid homage
to many traditional deities: Oshun, Shango, Esu, Ogun and Yemoja.

Projected pages of
newpapers proclaimed news like ‘Fela Raided in Ghana’, ‘Let’s legalise
polygamy – Fela’; and the many scrolling, flashing and shifting stage
accoutrements that were scattered above the stage ensured that one did
not quite know where to look. The stage set was a tribute to excess –
oddly fitting in depicting the life of a musical legend who was known
to have been ruled by extreme passions.

Preceded by his
beautifully decorated dancers, who taxed their waists and derrieres in
seductive dances that left many in the crowd gasping at the audacity of
their ample behinds, Sahr Ngaujah swaggered onstage and promptly took
the thousand-strong audience down a headlong dive into the life of
Abami Eda from the first strains of ‘Upside Down’.

Unknown Soldier

We watch with
wistful appreciation his devotion to his mother, whom he praises as
“the first (Nigerian) woman to drive a car… the first to visit China…
The Teacher” and we mourn along with him in pin-drop silence after her
death at the hands of ‘Unknown Soldier’. We accompany him when, evoking
the spirit of his mother, he summons an Egungun who leads him by the
hand to seek her in the world of the spirits. And along with him feel
the reprimand of her pronouncement when he begs to abandon the
homeland: “I refuse to give my permission for you to use what happened
to me as an excuse to run away.”

We are acquainted
uncomfortably – considering the British audience – with his long-held
scorn for those he calls Nigeria’s “tea drinking guests, the ones who
take our petroleum and people and leave us with gonorrhoea and Jesus.”
And together we are pallbearers who carry gifts of ‘Coffin for Head of
State’.

When the musical
seems to double back on itself, we accompany Fela on his musical
education to grey, cold London and sympathise when he wallows in what
might be termed a quarter life crisis. We all discover his identity in
Black emancipated Los Angeles, learning at the feet of Sandra who is as
much a political influence on him as Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver
whose texts she plies him with. And we share his triumph when he
declares, “Music is about change and I’m going to change the world.”

Complemented by a
12-piece band – with London-based Afrobeat musician, Dele Dosimi, on
the keyboard – and two lead singers who played the two major influences
in Fela’s life Melanie Marshall (Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti) with her
steely soprano, and Paulette Ivory (Sandra Isadore) crooning in sultry
alto, Ngaujah sweated his way through several saxophone build-ups,
while exuding the megalomania and larger than life charisma of Fela. He
played the audience expertly, we laughed when he wanted and danced when
he ordered. He took us from raucous participation in the notorious
pelvic thrusting clock dance to sad contemplation of the still-bitter
state of affairs in the nation he tried so hard to change.

Shuffering and Shmilling

‘Water No Get
Enemy’, ‘Coffin for Head of State’, ‘Expensive Shit’, ‘Upside Down’,
‘Shuffering and Shmiling’, ‘Sorrow Tears and Blood’, ‘Zombie’, ‘Yellow
Fever’, led us down route after intriguing route in the life of the
much missed icon. Finally, Ngaujah asked, “Who here has ever been to
jail?” and surprisingly several hands shot up in the audience.

Two of the more
insistent hands came from the first and fifth rows, and moments later,
stage lighting revealed them to be no other than Fela’s sons, Seun and
Femi Kuti. Seated discreetly among the crowd with his older sister,
Yeni, Femi had undoubtedly tried to evade recognition until the
nostalgia of the recreated shrine ambience prompted him to abandon
anonymity. Seun on the other hand had hardly been able to restrain
himself from joining Ngaujah and the dancers onstage. His head bobbed,
shoulders shook, and feet tapped in evident enjoyment of the music and
the bird’s eye view of the spectacular dancers gyrating before him in
an alternation of perfect choreography and reckless abandon.

Employing a
colourful array of costumes, expressions, dances, ideas, Fela! was
spectacular in its drama. Bearing in mind its international audience,
however, many of the songs were performed in English rather than the
Pidgin English. The musical also played, as it were with the facts:
Fela was no known Abiku, who had eschewed his mortality in anger at
being given a foreign name. Yeni, was quick to defend these add-ons
when NEXT caught up with her after the show, “It’s a musical, they
can’t get all the facts right. You will not find me criticising it
because it has ensured that almost 14 years after his death, Fela’s
legacy continues to live internationally.”

After curtain call

The performance
seemed to be packed too tight on a body too thin, getting lost in the
hazy area between drama and musical. Nigerians may not have seen all of
the Fela they know, but the parts of Fela seen fit to be depicted was
played out in almost an overdose. “The story is flimsy and confused,
there’s a lack of narrative drive,” complained Henry Hitchings of The
London Evening Standard, and one could not agree more. One might
therefore disagree with Femi Kuti’s remark that “This show is for the
international audience. It gives the average foreigner knowledge of
Fela and what he stood for. We Nigerians are too critical; we want the
Nigerian accent and fail to understand the intention of the producers.”

Seun Kuti who was
seeing the musical for the seventh time, said he found it enjoyable
though less heightened than the Broadway shows. “Not in the message,”
he hastened to add, “but in the drama.”

Watching Ngaujah
alternate between abrasive confidence, soul and affected contempt for
his “political enemies” was a thrill only slightly marred by his
mispronunciation of Yoruba expressions. And one could not help but
wonder, as he appeared in one elaborately embroidered Fela trademarked
costume after the other, whether this job of playing Fela could not be
better delivered by D’banj, whose new Mr Endowed mantra seems another
of his similarities with the illustrious “one who carries death in his
pouch”.

Enquiring from Femi
if when Fela! debuts in Nigeria as hoped, D’banj would be playing Fela,
met with a bright eyed knowledge but a refusal to comment, and one can
only wonder whether the Koko Master is not as we speak taking a crash
course in playing the brass.

Fela! at London’s National Theatre is an exhilarating testament to
the achievement of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti while being at the same time
exaggerated yet sketchy; toned down, as it were, to appeal to British
sensibilities. One therefore hopes that when the musical visits
Nigeria, the Abami Eda will be unleashed on his people in all his
overwhelming glory.