UPDATE: These performances have been canceled due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus.
Theater review by Alex Huntsberger
At first, the title of Mlima’s Tale seems slightly misleading. Mlima is an elephant with gargantuan tusks, and he is shot in the play’s opening moments by a pair of Somali poachers. The play isn’t about Mlima, but about the system that profits from his demise; incarnated by David Goodloe, Mlima glowers in angry silence as his teeth make their way from the plains of Kenya to the showroom of a Chinese tech billionaire. But Lynn Nottage’s choice of title is, in a way, distressingly apt. For all that Mlima may have been when he was alive, his ivory is all anyone really cares about. That is Mlima’s tale, and that’s the problem.
For the play’s Chicago premiere, produced by Griffin Theatre Company, director Jerrell L. Henderson gives Mlima’s Tale a lean and hungry look. Joy Ahn’s set is a hollow wooden structure draped with ropes and canvasses: a ghost ship carrying its prisoner to foreign servitude. Nottage’s may be America’s greatest living playwright, and her craft is on full display throughout. The play is a series of two-person encounters, with Henderson’s deft cast darting from one character to the next. Michael Tuerrentine is the production’s standout performer—he plays one of the poachers, an overwhelmed game warden and a slippery black marketeer—but every cast member has at least one memorable turn. Through it all floats Goodloe’s smoldering Mlima, covered in thick white paint that he uses to mark the play’s characters once they’ve made their devil’s bargain.
Given the lack of set dressing, L.J. Luthinger’s sound design and Jared Gooding’s lighting do much of the work to differentiate the play’s dozen or so different settings. (The only element that doesn’t come through is Jacinda Ratcliffe’s movement design, which doesn’t evoke much beyond a desire for the play to feature movement.) But as the evening progresses, a feeling of sameness sets in. While Nottage does a wonderful job laying out the larger forces of greed and power that shape the international ivory trade, Mlima’s Tale never strays from the direction prescribed by its unyielding moral compass; it goes straight from Point A to Points B, C and D without a single surprising turn. Once Mlima has been killed, his tale plays out exactly as you’d expect it to.
Griffin Theatre Company at Raven Theatre. By Lynn Nottage. Directed by Jerrell L. Henderson. With Ben Chang, David Goodloe, Sarah Lo, Lewon Johns, Collin McShane, Chris Pow, Michael Turrentine. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.