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Review: Dakar 2000 Proves Truth is Stranger Than Fiction
February 27, 2025, 9:49.17 pm ET

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By Brian Scott Lipton

If the phrase “liar, liar, pants on fire” suddenly became reality during Rajiv Joseph’s engaging new 80-minute play “Dakar 2000,” the entire stage of Manhattan Theatre Club Stage 1 at New York City Center would be consistently engulfed in flames.

Moreover, in this case, it’s not so much that Joseph is lying; he has repeatedly stated in interviews that the play is firmly rooted in his experiences as a 25-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal on the eve of Y2K. Instead, it’s the two characters who populate this seemingly unbelievable story who have an unusual gift for mendacity.

While our admittedly unreliable narrator Boubs (an effusive, effervescent Abubakar Ali, in a breakout performance) lets us know from the get-go that the story he’s about his relate is “mostly true,” we are nonetheless unprepared that almost every word that comes out of both his mouth, as well as from State Department official Dina (an effective, if slightly too-understated Mia Barron), is being used to further an agenda, either personally or professionally.

The pair meet not-so-cute after Boubs has overturned his truck on a deserted road, full of “illegally re-allocated resources,” and the wily Dina slowly, steadily uncovers what really happened that night despite Boubs’ best efforts to obfuscate the truth. Seemingly a no-nonsense, by-the-book bureaucrat, Dina threatens to put the distraught Boubs on a plane back to America, until – out-of-the-blue – she provides an alternate solution.

What further ensues over the course of a few days (ending on January 1, 2000) is best not revealed here. Let’s just say it’s more than the standard cat-and-mouse hijinks that form the basis of so many thrillers and romantic comedies. What emerges, in bits and pieces, is a perceptive and chilling look at just how much these two people (especially Dina) will do and say to justify their end goals.

For Boubs, one of his goals is to have sex with Dina. And while one never doubts that there some is sort of genuine connection between the pair, it remains unclear if the 46-year-old Dina – unlucky in love, if not in life – is ever as hormonally excited as Boubs. Ultimately, they’re both, in their own ways, far more desperate to make a difference in the world, consequences be damned, than in attaining personal pleasure.

May Andrales’ direction keeps the play flowing at a quicksilver place, aided by Tim Mackabee’s very smart revolving set, which showcases all the play’s settings (from a local African restaurant to a swanky hotel room to Dina’s office) at once. Emily Rebholz’s simple costumes do a good job of establishing the two characters, while Alan C. Edwards’ lighting, Bray Poor’s sound design, and Shawn Duan’s projections all make necessary contributions.

For the record, Joseph setting the play on the eve of Y2K (which, had it come true, would have led to unimaginably dire consequences) ends up being more of a clever plot device than a successful philosophical manifesto. Still, Boubs’ final monologue that states that we may be in worse trouble today than we even thought we might be in December of 1999 earns its share of uneasy, knowing laughs. We don’t really need playwrights to remind us that truth is stranger than anything in most of our imaginations.

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