Put the life of a legendary music-maker/campaigner in the hands of a controversial choreographer and you’ll possibly end up with some explosive stuff.
Put the life of a legendary music-maker/campaigner in the hands of a controversial choreographer and you’ll possibly end up with some explosive stuff. This is what the Broadway producer Stephen Hendel might have had in mind when he asked Bill T. Jones to direct and choreograph a musical about Fela Kuti. But whether or not he saw his dream realised, I am not sure.
Fela! hails from Broadway where it has been a long-running sizzling hit. It has great music, an almost endless stream of colourful numbers and an engaging storyline. Yet it never moves beyond the well-established formulae of musical theatre’s equivalent of a biopic. The inner struggle of the protagonist, the harsh and sometimes horrific vicissitudes of his life, are portrayed with the typical Broadway/West End gloss — at the expense of history and its crudeness.
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