Review: Dakar 2000, A Silly Sexy Spy Story Off-Broadway

Abubakr Ali’s gleaming smile lingers like a pearly white beacon in the haze of my memory. What about this specific detail sticks in my mind? I suspect it is the way that that smile made me feel simultaneously unsettled and charmed as truth and lies passed over those magnificent chompers—never pausing to allow us time to distinguish which is which in the opening moments of Dakar 2000. Rajiv Joseph’s new spy thriller is now making its world premiere with Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center.

Ali plays Boubacar, a “glorified delivery boy” (really a spy agency courier) whom everyone calls “Boubs” (pronounced exactly like you think). He insists that the story we’re about to witness, about an incident that happened in his 20s when he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, is entirely true. “Or most of it, anyway,” he qualifies. “Names have been changed. Some of the places have been changed. Some of the boring parts, snipped away. Some other stuff has been added to make it … theoretically more interesting. But otherwise all of it is almost entirely true.” And isn’t that exactly what Joseph, a glorified fabulist, also promises us in this allegedly autobiographical play?

The bulk of the story takes place in the last week of 1999, when the whole world was gripped with mild fear at the prospect of the Y2K meltdown. But the shadow of a greater threat looms. Dina (Mia Barron) is a state department employee focused on safety and security in sub-Saharan Africa. She has recently transferred to Dakar after a previous stint in Dar es Salaam, site of one of the two 1998 embassy bombings that served as an overture for the September 11 attacks.

At first glance, her immediate task seems to be entirely unrelated. She’s interviewing a Peace Corps volunteer (that’s Boubs) who flipped his truck while driving building supplies for a garden project in a rural village. But something is awry: Boubs applied to the embassy for the material three times and was denied. However, Dina had sent 40 sacks of Portland cement to the Corps’ regional house to build a security wall, and this is the exact brand that happened to spill out of Boubs’s truck. Dina threatens to send him back to the US for this misappropriation unless he collects signatures and fingerprints of everyone involved with the garden project before New Year’s Eve. Amazingly, he accomplishes the task, and that’s when Dina begins grooming him for an even more dangerous mission as it becomes clear she’s not just some paper-pushing diplomat.

Clear to everyone, that is, except Boubs, who seems to be the last guy in the theater to find out. Ali exudes the cheerful innocence of a 25-year-old living at the end of history, someone confident that spies are mostly a Hollywood invention. His goofy smile and habit of appropriating colorful local shirts (spot-on costumes by Emily Rebholz) make him the polar opposite of James Bond, which is perhaps why Dina finds him such an appealingly unsuspecting conduit for her plans.

Barron delivers an exceptional performance as a highly skilled professional woman who is always putting on a show, who can go from uptight Midwestern honors student to prowling cougar in an instant. She’s always plotting two moves ahead, smoothly switching tactics as she gauges which appeal will close the deal. Is it patriotism? The chance to go on a hero’s journey? Or is it just sex?

The attraction between the two in palpable. Like any good actor, Dina knows that chemistry is much easier to convey when it is genuinely felt. But she also knows that men are easy, and watching her work is a master class in manipulation.

For its risqué sexual politics and its veil of intrigue (which, smartly, never fully lifts), Dakar 2000 is that rarest of pleasures: an off-Broadway play that straight men will love. Joseph has drawn a convincing sketch of how intelligence officers recruit their pawns, which is not all that different from how the mafia does it. A tense 80-minute jaunt through a world of shadows, of little white lies told in defense of the nation, it makes an excellent companion to Joseph’s earlier play, Describe the Night. And yet it never loses its humor, making it feel like a tall tale recounted over a third round of scotch. We know ours is a great culture when one of our most esteemed dramatists can write a line like, “Boubs! Before we poop our pants, let’s think.”

Director May Adrales masterfully balances gravity and levity, railroading us into this story in a manner not dissimilar to how Dina ensnares Boubs. Tim Mackabee keeps the production flowing with a rotating stage and a long ramp leading up to the rooftop where Dina really hooks him as they peer out over the Kaolack skyline, stunningly projected on a cyclorama (by Shawn Duan). Lighting designer Alan C. Edwards and sound designer Bray Poor inject tension into the transitions, so that we feel like we’re watching a good Netflix series. Of course, the real world is never quite as dramatic as it is on TV, nor is it quite as dull as we might comfortably believe. There really are Dinas out there, and our tax dollars pay their salaries.

So the next time you read about Elon Musk’s DOGE minions (some of whom are much less mature than Boubs) eliminating a mysterious budget item, consider that they might just be defunding the people who have impressively managed to prevent a major terrorist attack on American soil for the past 24 years.