Review of Dakar 2000 Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club

In March 2025, which is when this blog post will also go live, I had the opportunity to go up to the city for work. The theater I worked at was putting on a production in Queens, so I booked a bus ticket up, made some arrangements so I had somewhere to stay, then began looking at things to do when I wasn’t working.

Theater is one of the biggest activities I do when in New York. I went to college here (before COVID shut everything down a year and a half into my college life), then my professional life happened to just be based here as well. That means I’ve probably done it all when it comes to touristy things, and I even venture to to like Jamaica, for example, just to find something good to eat.

That said, I know where to get a good ticket, and I keep an eye on all of the upcoming shows. I’m getting kind of tired of the shows on Broadway right now, and I don’t want to pay expensive prices. Most of what I saw this trip was through TDF (check it out if you’re eligible—it’s literally changed my theatre going life), and Dakar 2000 was a bit of an impulse purchase.

On TDF I only paid $42 for my seat total, which is fair. I was given H2, which is right on the aisle and towards the back of the theater. I would only be concerned if you’re on the far right of the audience, like further right from where I was, as I’m pretty sure those seats might lean partial view for scene changes.

The day I went to see Dakar was an unfortunate one for me, as I had somehow popped my knee and could no longer get up and down steps. I had to use the accessible train stations for the remainder of my trip, and I was a tad annoyed because Stage I, which is where this play is, is down several flights of steps.

Granted, it was my fault I didn’t wait for an elevator. I was there for about ten minutes before giving up and trying the steps, and my poor knee was screaming in pain by the end. Then it was more steps up to my seat (although small ones), which added to my misery. Good thing this play had some humor to let me chuckle and forget about the pain for a bit!

After a car accident in rural Senegal, a young Peace Corps volunteer is sucked into the orbit of a State Department operative.

This is a play that if you’re looking to be told everything you need to know in plain, direct language, then you’re not going to like this play that much. It’s the classic storytelling device where you have to think about everything that’s unfolding in front of you, as the truth is twisting and bending at all times.

We begin with an older version of the male character, who’s known under his nickname of Boubs, telling us that he’s a really good liar. From the beginning we don’t know if we should trust him or not, and as we see throughout the course of the show, we don’t always know who is telling the truth or what their intentions are.

The set rotates to show the passing of time. This production is a neat hour and twenty run time, and it feels just as short when you’re sitting in the seat watching it. After the opening monologue by Boubs, we go back into the past, right as the year 2000 is about to hit.

He’s spending his third year as a Peace Corp volunteer in Senegal. As he tells us, he feels like he’s accomplished nothing, and he’s just gotten into a car accident with a bunch of State Department materials that he’s not supposed to have.

He’s been helping a bunch of Senegalese women build a garden in their village, and he might’ve swiped the materials because all of his grants asking for them were denied.

We learn this through the head of security at the embassy here: Dina. She senses that Boubs might be lying during her conversation with him, but as he begins to slip up during her questioning, she wrangles a confession out of him.

He freaks out, she says he’s going to be sent home, but then she spots something in him that she wants to use. Suddenly Boubs isn’t someone who’s just a normal Peace Corps volunteer doing something useless in the world, and he sees a moment and opportunity he can seize.

So begins a vicious game between these two that consists of a lot of manipulation to get what they want. Dina is cold and calculated, the stereotypical government employee willing to bend the rules in order to achieve her goals. Boubs is very naive at the beginning of the show, but we can see his gradual transformation, or perhaps a gradual unmasking, as we learn more about what he’s gotten himself into.

Overall Thoughts

This is classified as a political thriller when it comes to genre, although there are solid pockets of humor tucked inside of the script. It’s a very tight script, and there are no moments throughout the play that are adding fluff. It’s very to the point because of the run time.

There’s really good chemistry between both of the actors, but I walked away most impressed with Abubakr Ali. He switches between calculated and acting kind of dumb pretty well, and you can’t help but to feel for his character as you realize he’s being played and eventually wants to become another cog in the machine.

And trust me, I’m very familiar with the world of the play and the State Department/Peace Corps initiatives. Everyone I know who was a Peace Corps has described how useless they actually felt, and that it felt like a performance. So as I was heading into this play, I could sense the subtle (and more obvious) critiques of the entire system.

Something I find interesting to ponder going forward is this: how would this play look like from an African perspective? We have pieces like Book of Mormon, but I would love to see the reverse perspective on a stage. Until then, I was happy with what I saw in Dakar, although I don’t know if I would have paid a ton of money for it.

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