Michael Laurence (left) as Zeus, and Mister Fitzgerald as Demi, in New York Theatre Workshop’s The Half-God of Rainfall.
Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic revenge fantasy about a basketball superstar who was born as a consequence of Zeus’s raping of a mortal woman. This multilayered piece uses poetry, music, and a mix of Greek and Yoruba mythology for a lyrical meditation on power, patriarchy, and the black feminist response to the #MeToo movement.
Directed by Taibi Magar, Ellams’s work is an impressive demonstration of his poetic talent, but it doesn’t quite take off as a drama because it lacks the vitality and sense of spontaneity that makes theater so compelling.
Before the play proper begins, the seven-member ensemble formally introduce themselves, identifying which Greek or Yoruba god—or mortal woman—they will be inhabiting for the next 90 minutes. Perhaps Ellams is spoon-feeding audience members a bouillabaisse of his native Nigerian culture, seasoned with its supernatural myths—but no matter how you see this collision of Greek and Yoruba deities on Riccardo Hernández’s minimalist set, the prologue smartly launches the piece.
Patrice Johnson Chevannes (standing) plays Osún, and Jennifer Mogbock is Modúpé in Inua Ellams’s contemporary epic, The Half-God of Rainfall.
Four performers—Mister Fitzgerald, Jennifer Mogbock, Patrice Johnson Chevannes, and Michael Laurence—undertake the single roles of the half-god Demi; his mortal mother, Modúpé; the river goddess Osún; and Zeus, respectively. Others, like Lizan Mitchell and Jason Bowen, do double duty, with Mitchell playing two Orisha gods, the wise Orunmila and the trickster Elegba, and Bowen playing Sàngó, an Orisha god of thunder, and the god’s spouse. Kelley Curran mostly performs the role of Hera, when not delivering cameo appearances by Hermes, Hercules, Perseus, and a few others.
The actors rise to the challenge of speaking Ellams’s verse trippingly on their tongues, but, in addition to their vocal dexterity when wrapping their mouths around Ellams’s sui generis rhymes, their esprit de corps is even more winning.
The story begins with a race between the Greek and Yoruba gods of thunder, Zeus (Lawrence) and Sàngó (Bowen), with the calculating Zeus slyly defining the rules of the contest:
Let us settle this as Gods. A race! My kingdom to yours. Your might thrown against mine. The loser answers the victor’s whims for an age, and the victor can take a mortal from the loser’s world.
When Zeus wins, he immediately slips into his guise as serial sexual predator and seeks out his human prize from Sàngó’s world. And, in spite of the rage of his wife, Hera (Curran), he ravishes Modúpé, a breathtakingly beautiful Yoruba woman. She conceives, and the half-god Demi (Mister Fitzgerald) is instantly born.
The boy Demi grows up in southwest Nigeria among humans in southwest Nigeria, with the gods watching on. Basketball is “more than a sport” in his hometown, it’s an obsession. But Demi, who is widely mocked by the locals as “Town Crier,” is banned from playing the sport. The reason: If his team were to lose, the moody and hyper-sensitive Demi would cry so much that his tears would turn the soil into a swamp. Or, as the River goddess Osún (Chevannes) relates the phenomenon:
Demi would drench his shirt, soak his classroom and flood whole schools as once he’d done their pitch, the soil swollen, poles sunk, it all turned to swamp for weeks.
The narrative turns, however, when Demi, weary of being taunted as Town Crier, grabs hold of the basketball one stormy-looking day, wrests the ball from the regular players on the court and drains the ball into the net like nobody’s business. Not only is Bolu, the team’s captain watching, but the god Sàngó reports on it with Olympian enthusiasm. “You didn’t see? Town Crier can’t miss! He just became the Rainman! Make it rain, baby! Yes! Shoot that three!”
Mister Fitzgerald as Demi, and Liza Mitchell is Elegba in New York Theatre Workshop’s The Half-God of Rainfall, directed by Taibi Magar. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
Demi, though he oddly still seems ignorant that he is Zeus’s son, leaves Nigeria’s provincial courts for a place where he might better fulfill his promise and exercise his supernatural talents as a basketball player. He goes to America and gets an NBA contract with the Golden State Warriors and eventually goes on to the Olympics. Indeed, Demi secures his place in basketball history: “Newscasters, journalists, sports companies hellbent / On monetizing the myth of him would call him / the sport’s prophet, its second coming, heaven-sent.”
Although the epic sweep of the poem and Magar’s unswerving direction keep the audience leaning in, the high-flown rhetoric can sometimes undercut the story’s emotional power. The actors narrate their characters’ actions, using the third person, in addition to speaking their own dialogue. Inevitably, the practice creates a psychological distancing, not only between the audience and actors, but for all the performers on stage. Although some brutal battles happen in The Half God of Rainfall, by and large the poetic language is the chief focus.
While Demi gets the lion’s share of attention in this play as the basketball superstar, his mortal mother, Modúpé, is actually the one who wrings one’s heart. She has a monologue in the second half of the play, in which she reveals how she is tortured by the memory of Zeus ravishing her, even though it brought her son Demi into her life. Or as she says: “What he took from me is clear— / control of my most precious self. But he did this: / he gave me you.”
Nigerian-born British poet Ellams has penned a powerful epic poem in The Half-God of Rainfall. Although it doesn’t altogether coalesce as a theatrical work, it certainly allows viewers to hear the voices of Black women fighting for their dignity.
The New York Theatre Workshop’s production of The Half-God of Rainfall plays through Aug. 20 at The New York Theatre Workshop (79 E. 4th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and information, visit nytw.org or by calling 212-460-5475.
Playwright: Inua Ellams
Direction: Taibi Magar
Sets: Riccardo Hernández
Costumes: Linda Cho
Lighting: Stacey Derosier
Sound & Music Composition: Mikaal Sulaiman
