Several weeks ago, I went to see Fela!, the Broadway show based on the life of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Today, a smattering of stories about Fela — and the women in his life — have hit the web. While there's no doubt that Fela is the star of the show, there would be no story without the women surrounding him in life - and onstage.

The show's director and choreographer, famed dancer Bill T. Jones, "streamlined" the story (set in the 1970s in the Shrine, Fela's club in Lagos, Nigeria) so that there are 9 wives instead of 27.

Felicia R. Lee writes, in today's New York Times:

Fela's collective marriage in 1978 to the women - many of whom had been teenagers when they first came to the Shrine and then his home to escape their families or find personal fulfillment - takes only a few minutes onstage. Fela says to the assembled women, "Will you marry me?," and they respond, "Yeah, yeah."

What the audience might not know is that the marriage - often described in prurient terms by the news media over the years - had been publicly described by Fela as a gesture of political solidarity and emotional support for his women after a devastating 1977 raid on his compound in Lagos, called Kalakuta.

Here's the thing about the women playing the wives, called queens: They are some of the most incredible dancers you have ever seen. Lithe, agile, unbelievably strong, muscled and fierce. Their costumes — halter and bra tops paired with tiny skirts and amazing leather leg braces — accentuate the physiques of the cast. ("We made a decision early on that recreating 1970s costume was not that interesting," set and costume designer Marina Draghici tells the Times' Guy Trebay.)

One of the most powerful characters in the show is Fela's mother, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, who, in real life, was a teacher, political campaigner, and women's rights activist. She was dubbed "The Mother of Africa" and was the first woman to drive a car in Nigeria and the first African woman to visit Communist China. In the show, she is presented as being so regal, so powerful, so other-worldly and wise, that she's basically a goddess.

Though the show Fela! doesn't marginalize or dismiss its female characters with condescension or ire, a newly re-released biography of the singer and activist shows that real life was not so rich. In August, reviewing Carlos Moore's Fela: This Bitch of a Life, Sam Baldwin of Mother Jones wrote: "Sexism, sadly, is what comes through most strongly."

Still, in the stage production, the ladies surrounding Fela feel less like concubines and more like a family. And the women playing these characters do not see themselves as mere accessories. From the Times:

Afi McClendon, who plays Ihase, the youngest-looking, smallest queen, said she saw the women as rebels. "In this day and age, feminine energy is so understated," Ms. McClendon said as she got into her makeup for a show. "They were women who had the courage to define themselves as individuals in a society that was so corrupt and did not allow them to be the individuals that they were."

Finding Depth In Fela's Women [NY Times]
A Wizard Who Works With Color and Pattern [NY Times]
Show About Afrobeat's Fela Tests Broadway's Tastes [Reuters]
Fela Kuti, Afrobeat's King of Pain [Utne Reader]
Music Monday: Fela Kuti's Bitch of a Life [Mother Jones]

[New York, November 30. Image via WENN.]

For those of you outside the US: you may be able to view the clip here.

Also: I wanted to put up the Doogie Howser, MD musical number, but alas, Hulu and NBC haven't made it available yet, for reasons that make no sense whatsoever to me. I'll post it as soon as (and if) they release it.

Loved the shoes. Loathed the show .O.K., I exaggerate. I didn't like the shoes all that much. But the wheel-heeled footwear known as merblades, which allow stage-bound dancers to simulate gliding underwater, provides the only remotely graceful elements in the musical blunderbuss called "Disney's The Little Mermaid"...The whole enterprise is soaked in that sparkly garishness that only a very young child — or possibly a tackiness-worshiping drag queen — might find pretty....Come to think of it, the motto of this production...could be, "You can never go broke underestimating the taste of preschoolers."

You won't see water. In fact, you won't even imagine water—which, in a fish story like this one, is an ominous sign...I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention. The big scenic flourishes and bland storytelling never got my imagination firing—never persuaded me to think that the actors scooting around on their Heelys really were mermaids or evil eels or any other freaky aquatic beasts.

There are lots of questions to ponder while being otherwise unengaged by Disney's new stage version of "The Little Mermaid." How can a merman and a squid be brother and sister?...If the sea witch is so powerful, how is she so easily dispatched? How does King Triton maintain those abs?...And while we're on that track, did no one at any point worry that the designs for this show are just plain ugly?...In a musical for which children are the primary audience, clarity of representation is fundamental. But...we often require explanation to know what we're looking at...What's surprising is how underwhelming the movie's most delightful numbers are here. The joyous calypso frolic "Under the Sea" and gloriously romantic "Kiss the Girl" are wonderful songs but [director Francesca] Zambello has compromised both with chaotic presentation, not helped by Stephen Mear's uninteresting choreography.

Somewhere out there in the choppy foam...the creators...let the compass slip overboard. In director Francesca Zambello's confused production — a morass of mechanical characters, syrupy new songs and gaudily irrelevant set pieces — all the warmth and charm of the film manages to get away. The bloated, 2 1/2 -hour show — an hour longer than the 1989 movie — represents a low watermark for the Disney-on-Broadway franchise...."Mermaid" ends up feeling less like a product meant for Broadway than for another sphere of entertainment: Disney on Ice.

[W]ith...breathtaking vulgarity and equally breathtaking confidence...this "Little Mermaid" [has] a certain...almost calculated mediocrity....Underneath all this baroque ornamentation was a tiny, tinny little musical struggling for its life.... There isn't much I can say of the cast - all swimming upstream with a kind of grinning gallantry. Sierra Boggess was sweet enough as the beached Mermaid; Sean Palmer wasn't quite sweet enough as the bleached-out Prince Eric... Sherie Rene Scott, with a Medusa wig and enough tentacles to make an octopus demand a recount, was an appropriately bitchy Witch Ursula, even if she overdid the drag-queen-in-drag bit. And the clowns - Eddie Korbich, Tituss Burgess (as the crab Sebastian), Jonathan Freeman and John Treacy Egan - clowned their hearts away to the audience's content. And, well, I think that's it, as Shakespeare said when he buried the last body in "Hamlet."

You try singing and dancing while wearing a tail. More than a little difficult. Yet "The Little Mermaid" — tail intact — amiably swims along on good cheer and charm....his musical, buoyed by one of the best Disney film scores and a delightful new leading lady, succeeds as enjoyable family entertainment. And, yes, the sets are big, but then, so is the ocean.

The problem with making the art for the audience, especially when the audience still decorates binders with stickers and glitter pens? They don't exactly have money of their own. So unless 13-year olds can convince parents, friends, and entire families to attend, well, they're not exactly gonna sell out the house each night.

Meanwhile, we cringe at the thought of a tween-friendly Sweeny Todd. Zac Efron as the blood-soaked Demon Barber of Fleet Street? God save our musical-loving souls. And yeah, we're totally singing "Send in the Clowns" right now.

Tweens Love Broadway, but Can't Save It Alone [NYT]

NY Times:

Can a musical be simultaneously indefensible and irresistible? Why, yes it can....Why, you may wonder, would anyone deem it necessary, or even worthwhile, to pay lavish mock homage to a dreadful movie by exhuming it for exhibition onstage? Has Broadway nothing better to do? Has the American musical theater reached such a nadir of inspiration? Well, yeah. I guess. Whatever. Why pester me with silly questions when there's so much silly bliss to be had at the Helen Hayes Theater, where the new, improved "Xanadu" opened last night....The show's winking attitude toward its own aesthetic abjectness can be summed up thus: If you can't beat 'em, slap on some roller skates and join 'em.

Huzzah, as the muses from Mount Olympus apparently like to say. [Xanadu]...is a grand little piece of smart dumb fun....Kerry Butler brings a devilish edge to the romantic absurdities of Kira, the nymph in '80s leg warmers who attempts Newton-John's Australian accent, when she feels like it...[and] Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa, two of the theater's prime scenery-stealing comics, are let loose to do their best damage as weird-sister sirens - think Cinderella's evil stepsisters in goddess polyester (wittily ridiculous costumes by David Zinn) singing "Evil Woman."

"The theater? They'll just take some stinkeroo movie ... throw it on a stage, and call it a show." I wish I could take credit for that astute bit of analysis when it comes to "Xanadu," the new Broadway musical adaptation of the cult favorite 1980 stinkeroo film, but it comes directly from the show itself....Unfortunately, such self-consciousness is not likely to increase your enjoyment of this slipshod enterprise, which belongs more in a fringe festival than on Broadway. Despite running a mere 90 minutes, it quickly proves wearisome in its one-note camp attitude.

A Broadway musical based on a rotten movie that's heavy on the cheese, Xanadu comments on the lack of inspiration in the theater world while threatening to become part of the problem, but it rises above all that with goofy self-mockery. Described by some as the world's longest Easter Bonnet Competition sketch, the show has some flat spots and desperate jokes, but it's generally grin-out-loud and even hilarious, with funny anachronisms, campy blurtings ("She's a demigod, bonehead!"), and looney assertions ("Kira is Tangerine—and they're both Clio.")

If you need a cure for the summertime blues or just like the idea of being in stitches for an hour and a half, "Xanadu," now at the Helen Hayes Theatre, will (Xana)do the trick. Kerry Butler...is simply out of this world as Kira. She has gorgeous pipes, great comic flair and puts on a fab faux Aussie accent that could make dingoes howl for more....In this story of a muse, the moment is eye and ear candy that's delightfully inspired.

Ms. Butler's near-perfect...approximation of her predecessor [Olivia Newton-John] is viciously adept: She somehow stuffs every single vowel into the word "go," thins out her redoubtable voice to replicate Ms. Newton-John's watery upper register, and conveys a singular unease whenever on her ubiquitous roller skates. Both in on the joke and completely in tune with Kira's burgeoning humanity, Ms. Butler pushes past the leg warmers and wooden dance moves to unveil a real character.

This is the best Broadway musical to feature roller-skating since Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Starlight Express" - but as it is also the only musical to feature roller-skating since "Starlight Express," that's no great commendation.... If you are of a certain age, you will remember that you had forgotten [the ELO music] and prepare to forget it again. That, I suppose, is the only goodish news of an absolutely ghastly show.

If you've never seen Xanadu the movie, here's the story in a nutshell: Loser Venice Beach chalk artist named Sonny creates street mural of Greek muses. They come to life. The main muse, Clio, (played by Olivia-Newton John), sets out to inspire the poor schlub Sonny to greatness. And along the way they fall in love and sing and do roller-disco. Naturally! Well, not so much: The reason that Xanadu is remembered as one of the biggest flops of all time was that, uh, no one seemed to tell any of the people involved that it that the conceit was a totally absurd one. Thankfully, those behind the musical version got it. And then some. The pups involved in this production camp it out like it's nobody's business. Kerry Butler (who plays Clio/Kira, the identity she assumes in "human" form while musing it up in leg warmers) does a dead-on Olivia impersonation, dragging out her put-on Australian accent somewhat shamelessly. Stealing the show, though, is Mary Testa as Clio's evil sister who, naturally, sings the ELO 80's classic "Evil Woman," one of the show's stand-out numbers, despite the fact that it wasn't in the original movie. As for the dialogue and the music, well, the revised script is snappier and more self-aware (thankfully) than the movie's was, filled with all sorts of anachronistic slang that moves the 90-minute show along with snap. And the score! It's exactly as we remember it — only better, because the actors performing it look alternately absurdly serious and moments away from peeing in their pants laughing. Exactly as they should be. At the end of the day, Xanadu: The Musical succeeds because it laughs at itself, and laughs hard. Plus, it has rollerskates.

Xanadu on Broadway

Christina Applegate: First down. The Hollywood "Glamour Barbie"-look may be Red Carpet 101, but Applegate wears it well.

Claire Danes: Penalty. Is it just us, or does Claire Danes own one dress in five different colors?

Donna Murphy: Fumble. The woman looks a fool.

Idina Menzel: Interference. Ruining Wicked star Menzel's gorgeous frock is her grumpy face.

Jane Krakowski: Instant replay. This silver lame dress is so... Studio 54.

Marcia Gay Harden: Penalty. No, we don't know what she was thinking.

Naomi Watts: Sacked. Beautiful pregnancy-inflated breasts should not be hidden away in a sheath. The only redeeming part of this whole ensemble is that it is accessorized with Liev Schreiber.

Bill T. Jones: Touchdown. Throwing a Henley-style sweater underneath a tuxedo makes the legendary modern dancer and newly-minted Tony-winner even dreamier than ever. And yes, we know he's gay.

Patti Lupone: Unnecessary roughness. Why do Patti Lupone's clothes always look like they're trying to attack her?

Vanessa Williams: Pass completed. Nice arc, great catch.

Zach Braff: Ejected. With a haircut this bad, Braff deserves to be benched for the entire season.

Carla Gugino: Touchdown. The color! The cut! The hair! The jewels! Gugino is almost a dead-ringer for Marilyn Monroe, who she played on Broadway back in 2004's After The Fall, and makes glamorous — and wearing chartreuse — look easy.