Dakar 2000

 Dakar 2000
Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage I
March 6, 2025 

Photo courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club

The Manhattan Theatre Club production of Dakar 2000 is a one hour and twenty-minute roller coaster ride of truth and lies.  Playwright Rajiv Joseph has written an impeccable two-hander.  His characters quickly intertwine and are unable to separate.  The events of their three-day connection changes the course of more than just their lives, and leave one of them with more questions than answers.

When Boubs, a Peace Corp volunteer (played by Abubakr Ali), crashes his jeep on the road to a small village outside Dakar, he knows he is in trouble.  He was transporting supplies without the proper authorization.  He is taken to the main office to meet Dina (played by Mia Barron).  She is concerned about his well-being, yet continually grills him on the details.  She is charmed by his naivete and impressed by his ability to lie his way out of a bad situation.  To help prevent his being sent back home, she gives him a file of paperwork to fill out with a list signatures and fingerprints to gather.  This will make it look like she requisitioned the transportation of supplies prior to his accident.  He gratefully takes the file and gets right to work.  He meets up with her two days later.  After they share personal stories, she asks him to meet her at a hotel in Dakar on New Years Eve, with the implication of a more intimate encounter.  At the hotel, Dina sets Boubs up on a mission with a questionable outcome. 

Abubakr Ali as Boubs
Photo courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club

Abubakr Ali is charismatic, gullible, and suave as Boubs.  He opens the show alone on stage.  It is present day.  He tells a few stories, then admits most of them are lies.  This sets the tone for the rest of the story.  His character is confident and grounded.  When he then takes the narrative back to Dakar in the year 2000, he is a fast-talking twenty-five year old, immature and silly.  This transition is smooth and impressive.  The audience is fully on his side, even though, since he already told us, we know he lies.  

Dina Barron & Abubakr Ali
Photo courtesy of Manhattan  Theatre Club

Mia Barron is sharp and slick as Dina.  During her initial interrogation with Boubs, she carefully listens and observes.  She glibly weaves her way into Boubs’ trust.  The audience is very aware that she is also lying, but doesn’t know how much or why.  We are more aware of the dangers than he is, yet we are equally manipulated into full involvement.  Ms. Barrow is skillfully in control of the action.  She is the only one who knows where it will lead, and we stay connected to her with the hope of finding out. 

Director May Adrales paces this piece so the rhythms in the dialogue drive the intent.  The audience is fully engaged from the moment it starts, and becomes riveted as the action unfolds.  The theme and culminating message are strongly related to present day political occurrences. 

Dakar 2000 is playing at Manhattan Theatre Club’s New York City Center Stage I through March 23.  You must see it! 

Domenick Danza

The Antiquities

 The Antiquities
Playwrights Horizons
February 28, 2025 

Photo coourtesy of Playwrights Horizons

Playwrights Horizons has partnered with Vineyard Theatre and Goodman Theatre in the production of Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities.  This intelligent and philosophical theatre piece leaves the audience with a lot to ponder.  The play reflects the evolution of mankind as a steppingstone to Artificial Intelligence.  The structure of the piece is unique.  It is a series of disjointed scenes that travel from the late 1800s to the late 2200s.  The strength of the fragmented events is the through-line of mankind’s yearning to connect to their departed loved ones.  The play is skillfully co-directed by David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan.  They fearlessly lead a cast of nine amazing actors who create numerous characters in this evolutionary journey.

Photo courtesy of Playwrights Horizons

The play is a “tour of the permanent collection in the museum of late human antiquities.”  It opens with two robotic women directly addressing the audience, asking them to imagine that they are present in human form for the tour.  They transform into Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, the mother of Lord Byron’s daughter, as they lead the audience into the first exhibit in the museum.  It is the night when Mary Shelley accepted the challenge to write “Frankenstein.”  Subsequent exhibits include a scene in the 1970s, where a tech geek has his first breakthrough in developing a robot that can make decisions on its own.  Another exhibit skips a few decades to when a family gets its first home computer and experiences the internet for the first time.  Then, sometime in the 1990s, Robin (the fictional version of Alexis) is developed.  As the exhibits move past the year 2025, AI becomes more sophisticated and begins to take over.  

Photo courtesy of Playwrights Horizons

After the audience views the collected artifacts (props from the scenes), the exhibits are revisited.  The characters’ reliance on their devices during these time periods is further explored and emotionally understood.  Their loss and loneliness motivate their reliance and acceptance on AI.  The tour ends in the Mary Shelley exhibit, where the “Frankenstein” story is shared.  It is different.  It now includes the building of a computer, which is a seed for the development of higher intelligence. 

Photo courtesy of Playwrights Horizons

Jordan Harrison has masterfully crafted a startling inquiry into the human experience that cannot be
overlooked.  Since the scenes contain historic and well-known facts, the fictional elements that drive the theme become believable.  This play is intellectually engaging as you follow the through-line and buy into the conclusions drawn from the future AI society, which are illustrated in the final Mary Shelley scene.  They include themselves in that story in order to verify their existence.  To this higher intelligence, human beings are nothing more than a stepping-stone in their own valuable evolution. 

There are only a few performances of The Antiquities remaining before it closes on March 2.  If you can get a ticket, go with a friend.  You will have a lot to talk about.   

Domenick Danza