In its thrilling opening rap, “Mexodus” gives an overview of the little-known history of Mexico as a refuge for thousands of escaping American slaves before the Civil War. Rhythmic, uncommonly melodic, densely informative, “Two Bodies” may remind you of another opening number, from a certain Broadway musical that’s also based on American history.
Unlike “Hamilton,” though – or “1776” or “Suffs” or “Assassins” – “Mexodus” doesn’t keep strictly to the historical record after that. This is in part because so little of this particular history was recorded. But Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, the talented creators and stars of this two-man musical, also seem less interested in dramatizing the history than in riffing on it.
They riff in two basic ways.
The first thing they tell us about is their music: “Everything you will hear tonight is created live. We will be building everything from scratch right before your very eyes.” This might seem an odd thing to say to those in the audience who are used to listening to live music when attending live theater, and might not mean much either to those who will be listening to “Mexodos” as an audiobook when Audible releases it in June. But aficionados of hip-hop understand that they are talking about looping — playing a drum beat or a musical phrase, then repeating it endlessly in a rhythmic or melodic pattern as a foundation for a song. How they do this on stage live, with the aid of Tony winning sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, is next level – not least because by the end of the evening, they have played a total of fifteen different musical instruments (guitar, piano, percussive instruments, horns, even a pair of scissors.) All while rapping and acting.
They are also using this piece of antebellum history to riff quite explicitly on current politics, seeing it all as a continuum.
No more walls or borders, no more police brutality
No more staying complicit in this twisted reality!
Here’s to more years of black and brown solidarity
They rap this in their sixteenth and final number, “Have Mercy on the Proud” after they’ve concluded the story of Henry and Carlos.
Henry (Robinson) is enslaved in Texas, when the wife of the plantation owner tries to seduce him, and, when her husband barges in on them, she claims Henry was attacking her. The owner beats him mercilessly; in self-defense, Henry kills him; then runs away, with a bounty on his head, aiming for Mexico, which outlawed slavery in 1829. He makes it over the Rio Grande floating on a bale of cotton, but just barely. He is rescued by Carlos (Quijada), who was a medic in the Mexican Army when It was defeated by settlers from the U.S. South, who grabbed Texas from Mexico and reinstituted slavery there. He resents the Americans, and feels guilt for abandoning his unit, which is the reason why he doesn’t turn Henry in for the large bounty. They wind up expressing the black and brown solidarity that the performers sing about.
Henry and Sam, Quijada has said, are “composites.” Robinson and Quijada evidently did some research, but it’s not clear how deeply they dug. They seem to have gotten the bit about Henry floating on a bale of cotton over the Rio Grande from contemporary Texas newspaper accounts about just such a feat, which are cited in an article in History.com (The Little-Known Underground Railroad That Ran South to Mexico.) This is the article that, Quijada said, first made him aware of this history, and inspired them to create their musical. But in that very article, the author writes that using cotton as a boat “wasn’t logistically possible.” But she also writes how strong “the imagery of floating to freedom on a symbol of slavery” – a symbolism apparently irresistible to the creative team even if historically unreliable.
If “Mexodus” is better appreciated as a concert than a work of musical theater – if its music is stronger than its storytelling and more reliable than its history – it has proven irresistible to audiences in Baltimore, Berkeley and DC before doing the same since its arrival last month at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater, where its run has been extended twice.
Both men are great artists; Quijada has been in one fine original play after another in New York over the last decade, “My Manana Comes,” “Oedipus El Rey,” his solo show “Where Did We Sit on the Bus.”
But I think part of the great appeal of the show is in its timing. At a time when those in charge of the United States government want to suppress the history of slavery in America, it feels like an act of political defiance to be made suddenly aware of part of that history we didn’t even know about. And at a time of mass masked arrests and deportations, it also feels like an exercise in political irony. I remember the scene in “The Day After Tomorrow” when people are desperately trying to get into Mexico. In that 2004 movie, the United States had frozen over because of climate change, making it unlivable. Is the day coming when people in the United States will again have good reason to escape to Mexico?
Mexodus
Audible Theater at Minetta Lane through November 1
Written and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D.Robinson
Directed by David Mendizábal
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $76 – $111. Rush: $38
Scenic design by Riw Rakkulchon, costume design by David Mendizábal, lighting design by Mextly Couzin, Looping Systems Architecture and Sound Design by Mikhail Fiksel, video/projections by Johnny Moreno, choreography by Tony Thomas
Photographs by Curtis Brown
(the music video of Two Bodies isn’t staged the same way as the musical)
