After delays, a stripped-down ‘Fela!’ finds its way to Washington

The director first conceived her vision for an intimate reimagining upon seeing the original 2009 Broadway production. Around 2017, Brown says, she got approval from “Fela!” producer Stephen Hendel to stage a revival at a Chicago theater that closed before she could follow through. A year or two later, Brown took the idea to Olney — only to see the pandemic put that pitch on ice.

“I’ve been chasing this one,” Brown says, “for a long time.”

Now, Brown is bringing her vibrant vision of “Fela!” to life for the musical’s first professional production since the Broadway tour ended more than a decade ago. For a show with a 20-person ensemble and 10-person band, it took an alliance between two of the D.C. area’s top regional theaters to make it happen: Olney and Round House Theatre are teaming up to produce the musical as part of a partnership, which will continue with a co-production of “Ink” later this summer at Round House’s Bethesda space.

“It was immediately obvious that [‘Fela!’] was the right show to pair in this co-production process,” says Olney’s artistic director Jason Loewith, who notes the theaters enjoyed a fruitful collaboration on productions of “Angels in America” and “In the Heights” in 2016 and 2017. “It’s an incredible mix of rock concert and political statement and sacred elegy, and the energy and thrill of it deserves to be seen.”

Round House artistic director Ryan Rilette underscores the benefits of the partnership: “It’s something that we would have never been able to really pull off on our own. So being able to do it with Olney, which has the experience in doing much larger-scale musicals than us, kind of fits perfectly.”

Set in 1978 and framed as Kuti’s farewell concert at the Afrika Shrine nightclub in Lagos, “Fela!” centers on the renowned political revolutionary as he reflects on his musical roots and speaks out against Nigeria’s military regime. While the Broadway production upped that story’s scale, Brown has shaped a more immersive take on the material for Olney’s main stage, with a set designed to evoke the real-life Shrine and stage-side table seating for a handful of audience members.

“Broadway is Broadway, so there are things that they do to make it a little more accessible or change it — the razzle-dazzle of it all,” Brown says. “I’m from Chicago, where we really enjoy realism and rough edges. So I really was like, ‘Oh, this is great when you have millions and millions of dollars. But I can’t wait to do the version that really will just feel like you are standing up and sweating at the Shrine.’”

Bringing continuity is star Duain Richmond, who reprises the role of Kuti — originally played on Broadway by his cousin Sahr Ngaujah — after portraying the character in the touring version, as a Broadway alternate and in concert stagings of the show. Having read all he can about the musician and developed a friendship with Kuti’s son Seun in the intervening years, Richmond believes he’s bringing new layers to a performance he first delivered in 2012.

From the archives: Sahr Ngaujah brings Fela to life in Tony-winning musical about singer-activist

“When I came to the show, I was just another actor coming in and stepping into the role,” Richmond says. “Being on this production now, it has given me the opportunity to go in depth with the research and understanding the moments that Fela is going through in every aspect of the show.”

Richmond’s institutional knowledge has proved particularly useful for a show that, because it hasn’t been revived at regional theaters across the country like most Tony-winning musicals, lacks conventional reference materials for the creative team to draw on. When it came to convincing Hendel to finally greenlight a revival, Brown notes the process amounted to a “Golden Fleece quest.”

“It’s not a regular licensed show,” Brown says. “So this is sort of akin to, I don’t know, rummaging around in Stephen Sondheim’s basement somewhere and finding some fragments of a thing that you cannot ask him about exactly — and then saying, ‘Yeah, let’s put it up.’”

That puts additional responsibility on the shoulders of music director S. Renee Clark, who notes that the written score, script, cast album and taped performances of “Fela!” offer contradictory versions of how certain songs unfold. But for Clark, a longtime devotee of Kuti’s eclectic songbook, that opportunity for reinterpretation is the ultimate labor of love.

“It’s not just another theatrical production,” Clark says. “I mean, this is my playlist.”

Kuti, who died of complications from AIDS in 1997, had given himself the name Anikulapo — meaning “he who carries death in his pouch” — in belief that he would achieve some degree of immortality. Sure enough, as “Fela!” gets a second life onstage, his message of combating oppression endures.

“He lived a fearless life,” Richmond says. “Fela said he will live forever, and he carried that notion throughout his entire life. And he was absolutely right, because here we are in 2023, and we’re still talking about it. We’re telling his story.”

Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd., Olney. 301-924-3400. olneytheatre.org.