Peter Brook is one of the last legendary twentieth century directors still working in the theater. He has rocked theater history with his extremely unconventional productions like “Marat/Sade” in the 1960s and his production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 1970, which ushered in what is now considered to be the modernist take on Shakespeare. The fact that he has returned to the United States with a new production (and possibly his last production to be imported here) should be noted by any New York theatergoer who knows his theater history.

“Tierno Bokar”, less an actual play and more a theater piece, is adapted by Marie-Helen Estienne from the West African writer Hampate Ba’s Life and Teaching of Tierno Bokar, the Sage of Bandiagara. It’s performed in French with supertitles. The ten black actors of the ensemble cast come from such countries as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Mali, and Vietnam. The piece attempts to tell the story of Tierno Bokar, a Sufi mystic who gets in the middle of an intense fight between rivaling religious factions in colonial French-controlled Africa of the 1930s. It seems as if what everyone is disputing over is a trifle: whether or not a prayer should be recited eleven or twelve times. However, Bokar’s involvement unfortunately leads to deaths and chaos.

It was not meant to be this way, but the result of the current production at Columbia University, which also marks its US premiere, feels ultimately Brechtian. Brook has researched and taken this parable in an attempt to make a statement not about politics, but about tolerance and understanding in the promotion of cultural diversity, just as if Brecht were to take a story from the past in order to express his thoughts about the present.

One cannot doubt that a lot of dramaturgical work must have been done on the part of Brook for this production. And just for the sake of seeing a production directed by Brook, it’s probably worth a trip to Columbia University. However, theatrically, the piece is problematic, confusing, slow and rather boring. There is so little movement in the production from the actors that one might as well just watch the supertitles.

On stage, there is little scenery but a golden mat and a tree. All of the actors are wearing white tunics, and a lot of them spend most of the play sitting down. There is a narrator (Habib Dembele) who explains to us what is going on in regards to the prayer question. Although most of Bokar’s people believe in only reciting the prayer eleven times, Bokar insists on thinking an issue through. He eventually meets with the opposition leader, and is consequently disavowed by his people, leaving him to die alone.

There are individual moments throughout the piece that are likely to stick out in the 90-minute production. One was when actor Sotigui Kouyate, as Bokar, reacted to seeing electricity and a movie for the first time in the midst of the play’s action. Obviously, the moment had little to do with Brook’ s overall message or the plot, but Kouyate’s large, expressionistic, and delighted facial gestures somehow stood out. Whatever one is bound to take away from the piece, whether a moment or the kind of grand message which Brook is at least attempting to make, sitting through a Peter Brook production – just for the sake of sitting through a Peter Brook production – might just be worth it.

Tierno Bokar

Directed by Peter Brook

Adapted from Amadou Hampaté Bâ's ''Life and Teaching of Tierno Bokar, the Sage of Bandiagara.”

text by Marie-Hélène Estienne

LeFrak Gymnasium in Barnard Hall

3009 Broadway

212-239-6200