A THILLER IN REVERSE
“It’s the story of a kid who just wanted to make a difference…”
But what price does he pay for it?
Boubs (short for Boubakar), the narrator of Rajiv Joseph’s gripping new play Dakar 2000 who utters that introductory line, is a devoted Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal. It’s December 1999, on the eve of the millennium, and this twenty-five-year-old idealist is intent on doing good after three years of service. He’s helping a group of Senegalese women to build a gardening project—by giving them supplies from the State Department that have been shipped to him to use for other purposes.
So Boubs gets into trouble. Dina (age forty-six), a state department official (“Deputy Regional Supervisor of Safety and Security for Sub-Saharan Africa” is her bureaucratic title) calls him into her office following an accident Boubs has experienced while driving his truck with the supplies. Instead of offering him sympathy, however, she accuses him of being a liar and “illegally reappropriating State Department resources to an outside foreign party.” She threatens him with deportation back to the US unless he writes up a report on the supplies and fingerprints the women involved in the project.
It seems like a harmless request. But nothing is harmless in this spell-binding two-hander. What seems like a genuine, evolving friendship turns into a flirtation and dangerous entrapment. “You can like someone and still manipulate them,” says Dina, jokingly. But it isn’t a joke.
For Dina, too, wants to make a difference. Sixteen months ago, she lost three friends in as terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Tanzania, and she is intent on finding those who are responsible. Calling in Boubs’s debt to her (for allegedly saving him from deportation), she demands that he help her identify the terrorist responsible, whom she says will be staying at the Hotel Independence Hotel in Dakar. She instructs him to enter his bedroom and fingerprint him while he sleeps.
What happens is a shocking “bait and switch” which reveals Dina’s manipulation, her own lies, and the extent to which she has set Boubs up to achieve her goal. Ultimately, the play functions as a thriller in reverse—meaning that the stunning truth of Dina’s actions aren’t fully revealed until the play’s end (don’t worry, no spoiler alert!). And then you think: “Ah… so that’s what was happening…”
“None of us really knows the whole truth about everything,” Boubs contemplates in the end, as he realizes that Dina isn’t who she says she is (again, no spoiler).
Even after these shocking revelations, there’s yet another plot turn—involving a heroic action on the part of Boubs and a new choice that he makes, in furtherance of his dream to make a difference. It’s a choice that, ironically, is similar to Dina’s.
Abubakr Ali and Mia Barron are a dynamite duo in Manhattan Theatre Club‘s production, each eliciting our empathy despite the things they do. (“Why do you like me?” Dina asks Boubs. “I don’t even like me!”) May Adrales skillfully directs their pas de deux on Tim Mackabee’s set, featuring a rotating circular path upon which the actors play. Shawn Duan’s projection design provides a stunning backdrop.
An alumnus of the Peace Corps himself, Rajiv knows whereof he writes, in this slick, politically astute thriller. He sets his play at a critical time—the turn of the 2lst century, when fear over Y2K and the end of the world pervade. As Dina prophesizes: “It’s going to be a group effort. A collaboration of our respective fields of expertise: Technology, extremism, the environment, and a virus. A quartet to end life on earth.”
Given the upheaval we’re now experiencing in our own country and our world, this dark prophecy has an alarming resonance.
In contrast, Boubs offers us a response: “ I know a lot of you think the world is in a really bad place right now… But maybe everything is going to be OK… Or… maybe it IS the end of the word… I think maybe it’s better if we don’t think about it…”
This compelling play about human nature, truth and lies, manipulation in the name of good, and breaking the law couldn’t come at a more relevant time. Dakar 2000 provokes us with essential questions: How can each of us make a difference today? How far will we go to put things right?
photos by Matthew Murphy
Dakar 2000
Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center, Stage 1, 131 West 55 St.
90 minutes, no intermission
ends on March 23, 2025
for tickets, call 212-581-1212 or visit NY City Center
