Theater can be a powerful force, both for education and entertainment. The electric new two-man musical Mexodus, which opened at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre following a successful run last year in Washington, D.C., offers plenty of both. Co-creators and stars Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson flesh out a little-known chapter from American history — the flight of escaped Black slaves not to the north but to the south, to the newly independent nation of Mexico. But they also embrace a live-loop performance technique that allows them to create rich, melodic, and infectious hip-hop-inflected songs with multiple instrumental and vocal tracks in real time (with an assist from looping systems architect and sound designer Mikhail Fiskel).
The effect is extraordinary, enabling the pair to make good use of a wide range of instruments — keyboards, guitar, standing bass, accordion, trumpet, percussion, beat-box vocals, and even the call-and-response singing of the audience. I have seen other productions that have employed similar technology, but none as elaborate or as musically successful as this one. Chalk it up to Quijada and Robinson’s musicianship but also to the sonic complexity of their score, which skillfully blends narrative rapping and lyrical refrains that show off Robinson’s crystalline tenor.
The effect is mesmerizing, enhanced by the easy onstage chemistry emanating from Quijada and Robinson. They repeatedly break the fourth wall to bring the audience into their jam session, to share bits of their personal history, but also to underscore how little documentation there is about the Southern Underground Railroad. Between 1829 (when Mexico won independence from Spain) and 1865 (when slavery was abolished in the newly reassembled United States), an estimated 4,000 to 10,000 former slaves fled from the slave-holding South across the Rio Grande. “Did you know this shit? We didn’t know this shit!” they sing in unison. “Why?! Cuz it wasn’t allowed, it wasn’t allowed… it wasn’t spoken aloud!!”
Mexodus shifts from spoken-word lecture to a thinly dramatized story about a Kentucky-born Black man named Henry (Robinson) who finds himself on a 4,000-acre cotton plantation in Texas when he’s falsely accused of getting too familiar with the owner’s wife — and then accidentally kills the owner in the dispute that follows. He hoofs it to Mexico, barely making it across the Rio Grande — where he’s rescued by a Mexican named Carlos (Quijada), a medic in Mexico’s war for independence who’s now struggling as a sharecropper. Carlos treats Henry’s injuries and shelters him until he recuperates long enough to help in the fields. The two form an improbable bond rooted in mutual trust and a determination to succeed (it turns out that Henry knows far more about farming than his nominal employer).
The score’s influences also evolve from hip-hop to more Latin and Western, as Quijada brings out his guitar and cowboy hat (director David Mendizábal also designed the costumes). In addition, Quijada seamlessly moves from English to Spanish, without any need for projections for non-Spanish speakers to follow along, underscoring the fluidity of both the Southern border as well as our ability to move freely in multiple linguistic mindsets. “Why does the bird in the cage still have a tune, when he’s working in the heat of the afternoon?” Henry sings in one of the show’s most memorable songs. “Because today is the day that he might be…” he begins, with Carlos picking up the thought: “Libre, por ley libre, libre como el aire, la lluiva, y el sol.” And just as they’ve grown to finish each other’s sentences, they’re also repeatedly piling on new elements to the audio loop we are hearing. This is a bromance of mutual admiration and goals (that occasionally offers hints of something more).
My only quibble with Mexodus is that there’s not quite enough plot to sustain a 90-minute show. Once Henry meets up with Carlos South of the border, very little seems to happen to them. That may be a reflection of the gaps in the historical record, which Quijada and Robinson frequently note, but it’s also a shortcoming in holding our interest in characters who can seem more like archetypal composites than actual people. (Quijada and Robinson are more compelling when they share snippets from their childhood because of the specificity of the anecdotes: Quijada’s family nervously stopping for gas in a rough Chicago neighborhood, and Robinson’s Aunt Poo-Pay driving across North Carolina with other relatives to attend his birth.) The abstraction extends to the staging, where the actors move about simple rafters in a stage (designed by Riw Rakkulchon and lit by Mextly Couzin) to resemble a shed lined with corrugated metal.
Mexodus is not like that other hip-hop musical that swept up so much attention (and so many awards) a decade ago. Unlike Hamilton, it’s less interested in digging into the complicated legacy of a founding father, of condensing a door-stopper biography for the stage in a modern idiom. Instead, the goals are simpler: to dig up a forgotten chapter of our past and reawaken connections between Blacks and Latinos whose common goals fighting discrimination and oppression go back almost two centuries. “Liberation in this nation is still being confronted,” Robinson reminds us in song near the end of the show, “when Black and brown bodies continue being hunted.” It’s a heartfelt and urgent message, told with a sick beat that will bring you to your feet to dance. ★★★★☆
MEXODUS
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through October 18 for $46 to $121
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