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.