The Nigerian-born American playwright Mfoniso Udofia is perhaps best known for her nine-play Ufot Family Cycle about the Nigerian immigrant experience in the United States (some parts of which have been performed in New York over the last decade or so. For her new work, creation stories and all the important importants. Udofia turns her gaze inward — creating a stylized autofiction centered on a middle-aged Nigerian-American playwright and theater professor who finds herself struggling with two types of creation: writing a new work that doesn’t spring from some other, recognizable texts and having a child of her own.
Our heroine, played with confidence and intelligence by Abigail C. Onwunali, calls herself the “thegrownwoman” and narrates a memorable day in her life when she wakens from a tumultous dream where she’s visited by a figure from Yoruba mythology (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) who appears like a ghost covered in shaggy strands of rope (costumes by Sarafina Bush). She walks through a day involving false starts in her creative notebook, an unsettling visit to her physician about her fifth round of IVF treatment, and a playwriting class where she urges her students to play with rigid narrative structures.
What results is a metaplay that itself is in conversation with theatrical tradition, borrowing from realism and fantasy, old-school mythology and up-to-the-minute technology. Her Alexa device plays a key role here (voiced by Grays), as does a playful younger version of herself who shadows her throughout her day and helps us to understand the origins of her creativity. Savannah Commodore, who made her Broadway debut this past spring in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, flashes remarkable self-possession while still seeming girlish and winsome. It is not a small role, and she pulls it off with the skill of an actress with decades of experience.
Though the play leans into the absurd and the fantastic — even introducing the woman’s childhood creation, a rapping horse named Mr. Cornell dressed in Cheeto-orange braids and a hot-pink track suit — Udofia and director Tamilla Woodard maintain a tether to the recognizable here and now. We watch the woman vibe to Spotify playlists with familiar hits that a middle-aged Black woman would likely have cued up on her Alexa, and field calls from a worried mom who expects a visit from her daughter.
She also studs the material with a lot of humor, from the names of fictional pregnancy-advice websites (Ovaryachiever.com) to Grays’s patter-perfect rap rejecting the woman’s assertion that he’s just a deus ex machina to lead the protagonist to her required epiphany. “I’m not God in the machine,” Mr. Cornell retorts, “I’m more akin to Chekhov’s Pony.” There’s a great deal of playfulness here, of subverting dramatic tradition while calling out the subversions at the same time. The storytelling is enhanced by Jason Adrixxone-West’s elegant set design, Alan C. Edwards’s lighting, and Katherine Freer’s projections that conjure both storybook simplicity and the awesome evocation of the cosmos.
There’s also a good deal of predictability in Creation Stories. The moment Commodore’s precocious yarn-spinner emerges from the messy pile of laundry on the apartment floor, you’ll probably guess that Udofia intends suggest that our blocked protagonist can find a path forward by reclaiming her youthful creativity: her plays as a substitute for the human progeny she may not be able to bring to the world. It’s not a new idea, but neither are most fairy tales. And there’s enough originality here to cast a fresh glow on the familiar. ★★★☆☆
CREATION STORIES AND ALL THE IMPORTANT IMPORTANTS
LCT’s Claire Tow Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 95 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 1 for $39