PicksInSix Review: MLIMA'S TALE Griffin Theatre Company
Majestic spirit drives powerful “Mlima’s Tale”
If you are as moved as I was after experiencing Lynn Nottage’s disarming drama “Mlima’s Tale,” a Griffin Theatre Company production that opened Sunday in its Midwest premiere at Raven Theatre on North Clark, you will seek out and read the 2012 Damon Tabor article “The Ivory Highway” on which Nottage based her story. It’s not clear to me if reading the article in advance will enhance your appreciation of Nottage’s intense work, which unfolds in 90 brisk—and sometimes disturbing but intensely powerful—minutes. It will, however, provide a broad context in which to understand the complexity of the piece and Nottage’s superb skill in amplifying the international crisis of poaching elephants for their ivory tusks and profiteering by criminal syndicates.
Legal trade in ivory has been banned for decades in many countries. The United States was by far the largest importer in the 1800s, which led to an increase in preservationist organizations facing off against the growing threat of poaching and, more recently, using modern GPS technology to protect the elephant population in designated reserves. Despite these efforts, the numbers tell another grisly story. Emboldened criminal operations pushed the population down from more than 1.4 million elephants in the 1960s to 400,000 by 2012. Today, that estimate has shrunk by 100,000. At these levels, there is not enough time for the species to repopulate, which increases demand in terms of volume. The endless spiral leads to dire predictions in the decades ahead.
Mlima (David Goodloe), the central character in Nottage’s play, is a magnificent, rare, and much beloved 50-year-old Savanna elephant with colossal and perfectly symmetrical tusks, who is safely under the protection of the federal reserve program. This protection is of no consequence to the two poachers who secretly track and savagely kill Mlima in the reserve, remove the massive tusks, and leave the animal’s body ruthlessly disfigured.
What begins as a savage tale of greed and treachery evolves into a series of liaisons between an ever-widening network exposing the seamy underbelly of the worldwide ivory smuggling community. At every successive profiteering milestone, Mlima’s haunting spirit marks the co-conspirators—an act representing tribal lore—as traitors to the species, to nature and, ultimately, to humanity.
Director Jerrell L. Henderson has assembled a solid ensemble cast—Lewon Johns, Michael Turrentine, Colin McShane, Ben Chang, Christopher Thomas Pow and Sarah Lo—who portray numerous roles on Mlima’s spiritual journey. The rustic nature of Joy Ahn’s set is enhanced by Jared Gooding’s lighting design, L.J. Luthinger’s sound design and costumes by Caitlin McLeod.
Throughout “Mlima’s Tale,” we are implored to make better-informed decisions, challenge ourselves to consider the price we pay for beauty, and make a universal commitment to preserving our natural resources and the native habitat for endangered species to ensure that our fragile ecosystem survives–all powerful and important messages that demand our time and consideration.
Link: Damon Tabor - “The Ivory Highway”
PHOTOS|Michael Brosilow
GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY
presents
MIDWEST PREMIERE
Lynn Nottage’s
MLIMA’s TALE
through March 21, 2020
RAVEN THEATRE
6157 N. Clark St.
(773) 338-2177
WEBSITE
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