Anika Larsen, who is in fact Shafrika, The White Girl, was used to being in front of an audience long before she came to New York and began performing on Broadway (Xanadu) and off-Broadway (Zanna, Don’t!). Growing up with mom, dad and nine brothers and sisters provided an audience ready-made.
What This Show Is About
Larsen’s mother adopted black, Latino and Asian babies and raised them with their four biological siblings in one big happy/unhappy Larsen home. It was like a social experiment of '60s idealism.
Shafrica, The White Girl is Larsen’s funny, musical and serious take on what it means to grow up in your own personal Rainbow Coalition. And to carry that image one step farther, rainbows are lovely but always accompanied by rain.
Backed by a cast portraying her family members on a simple set that serves as Cambridge, Mass., Yale and New York, Larsen & Co. narrate, act, sing and dance significant moments in the lives of Anika and her family.
The series of plays within the play are most times humorous but sometimes touching and moving as well. Shafrika, The White Girl offers insight into the beauty and the challenges of trying to live for ideals of equality and diversity.
Music as a Passport
Co-conceived by Larsen and director April Nickell, Sharfrika features 12 songs with a host of composers and orchestrators but with most original lyrics by Larsen, who also wrote the book. “My Credentials” is especially effective at explaining how Larsen ended up as the only white member of an African American a capella group at Yale, and how she found music as the passport to every important destination in her life.
Shafrika was choreographed by Luis Salgado, and he is one to watch. The show really begins to find its way with the school-yard chant/dance “Shake Ya Booty,” where we begin to see the effect of Larsen’s mother’s choices on her when she’s outside the family. Salgado’s moves light the place up.
Unavoidable Comparisons
Comparisons to Sherie Renee Scott’s Everyday Rapture are going to be unavoidable, but I think unfortunate. These are different shows. Rapture is about Scott coming to grips with a repressive upbringing. It’s about leaving it behind.
Shafrika is about coming to grips with Larsen’s upbringing but figuring out how to embrace it.
It isn’t all happy endings for Larsen’s siblings or for the Larsen family. But Anika/Shafrika and the audience benefit from an honest look at it.
There is one place Shafrika would do well to follow Rapture’s lead and that would be to trim the run time to 90 minutes. This fluid show would be better off without an intermission.
Where and When
- The Vinyard
108 15th Street
- Show Times and Tickets
- Opening: June 21, 2009
- Closing: June 28, 2009
- Genre: Musical
- Run Time: Two hours (with intermission)
- Advisories: None