Saheem Ali

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Buena Vista Social Club

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Buena Vista Social Club

Theatergoers who yearn for a tropical getaway need look no further than the musical Buena Vista Social Club, set in Havana, Cuba, and alternating between 1996 and 1956. With music by the eponymous collective—the subjects of German director Wim Wenders’s 1999 documentary that inspired this production—the show presents young and old versions of the principal characters (played by different actors) as they cut their professional teeth as artists and learn to jam—and survive tough political times—together.

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Fat Ham

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Fat Ham

James Ijames has borrowed rudiments of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to jump-start his roistering new comedy Fat Ham. A coproduction of the Public Theater and the National Black Theatre, Fat Ham is a dramaturgical ragbag, blending bits of the greatest tragedy in the English language with Southern Gothic caricature and sitcom tropes from Tyler Perry and the chitlin circuit. Saheem Ali has directed the show’s endearing cast with verve and velocity comparable to his lightning-paced Merry Wives in Central Park last summer.

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Nollywood Dreams

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Nollywood Dreams

Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play was a huge hit for MCC Theater when it premiered in 2017. Set in an all-girls Ghanaian boarding school, the play offered a trenchant examination of teen bullying, fat-shaming, and colorism, and it showed that the United States does not corner the market on adolescent cruelty. Nollywood Dreams, Bioh’s play currently running at MCC, focuses on the Nigerian film industry, but it similarly demonstrates that shady business practices, cutthroat competition, and rabid celebrity worship are not exclusive to Hollywood.

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Merry Wives

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Merry Wives

Farce, with its antic misunderstandings and confused identities, can polarize audiences. Spectators may either be exhilarated by the pandemonium or left cold. With Merry Wives: A Celebration of Black Joy and Vitality, the sole production of this summer’s Free Shakespeare in Central Park, playwright Jocelyn Bioh gambles that, after a year of societal strife, she can unify audiences by updating William Shakespeare’s rambunctious farce The Merry Wives of Windsor.

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