Mia Barron and Abubakr Ali in Manhattan Theatre Club’s world premiere production of Dakar ... [+] 2000 by Rajiv Joseph, directed by May Adrales Matthew Murphy “The truth,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “is rarely pure and never simple.” That is very much the case in the off-Broadway thriller Dakar 2000 by Rajiv Joseph. The play takes place in Senegal during the final week of 1999. Y2K is upon us and the end of the world may be looming. Boubs, (Abubakr Ali), is a Peace Corps volunteer on a mission to help better the lives of the people in the town that he is serving. The women of Thiadiaye are trying to build a community garden, but have no resources. Determined to assist them, Boubs, a tangle of insecurities, will do nearly anything on their behalf. But that doesn’t bode too well with Dina Stevens (Mia Barron), a savvy State Department official who has a mission of her own and a covert plan for Boubs. Presented by Manhattan Theatre Club and now playing at New York City Center Stage, Dakar 2000 is a roller coaster of twists and turns. “It is a coming-of-age story tucked inside a spy thriller—genres that you don’t often see paired together,” says Barron of the play directed by May Adrales. In addition to the cat and mouse intrigue there’s also the relationship story. “Albeit a possibly romantic, potentially dangerous relationship between a younger man and an older woman,” says Barron. It’s a perilous situation for them both. Especially since Dina is a State Department official trying to manipulate a young peace corps volunteer to embark on a questionable covert operation. “Along the way, Dina develops feelings for him that become indistinguishable from her manipulation of him. He develops feelings for her. And he loses some of his idealism and learns how to be a manipulator himself,” says Barron. “So, they both lose and gain within the relationship.” The play contains the constant hum of subtle shifts of their power dynamic. And, says Barron, “makes their relationship electric and theatrical.” MORE FOR YOU NYT ‘Strands’ Today: Hints, Spangram And Answers For Thursday, March 20th ‘NYT Mini’ Clues And Answers For Thursday, March 20 Ukraine Triple Taps Russia’s Engels Bomber Base Mia Barron and Abubakr Ali in a scene from Dakar 2000 Matthew Murphy Jeryl Brunner: How did you get involved with Dakar 2000? Mia Barron: Rajiv asked me to do an early reading and, at that point, the play was in a very early stage. In fact, at the time, it was a three person play. And even though it was still being formed, I was immediately drawn in by the character. It is rare to have a female character in her 40s who's such a rich, contradictory person, not just a mother or a partner. And to have part of her complexity be her power and her sexuality, is just rare. It's a great, huge gift of a role. Also, luckily for me, Rajiv is a loyal collaborator. So once I did the original reading of the play, he made it clear that he wanted me to do it. I was thrilled, both because that kind of collaborative loyalty doesn’t always happen, and also because I knew I would get to see the play through and be a real part of helping bring it to life. Making a new play is so hard. I mean, a new play is like a microcosm of raising a child. Mia Barron and Abubakr Ali Matthew Murphy Brunner: Playwright Rajiv Joseph—whose credits include has such a unique voice. What do you adore about his work? Barron: I have always wanted to work with Rajiv. I’ve known him for years and have long admired the mix of imaginative theatricality and attention to human detail in his writing. His language is funny and sharp but also there’s a sense of mystery—a sense of “this could only be happening in the theater.” A scene from Dakar 2000 Matthew Murphy Brunner: Dina is so complicated. She’s a mystery, yet very human. What qualities does she have that you adore? Barron: Dina is complicated because she is capable of doing some objectively bad things. But in her mind, she is doing them for a greater good. In order to play this character, I had to map out an almost viscerally understandable rationale for why she does what she does. In her/my mind, she is doing some bad things for justifiable reasons. And those reasons made more sense to me the deeper I got into rehearsals. Brunner: Do you feel empathy for Dina? Barron: I would not want to be capable of doing those things in real life. But I feel a lot of empathy for Dina and for the losses in her life that have brought her to the point where she feels her only option is to act ruthlessly. I also feel empathy for how lonely and hard it is for her to be a professional, powerful woman in such a male dominated world. I was, maybe naively, caught off guard by how many audience members told me afterwards that they felt she was being manipulative, because I had come to feel that she has a lot of genuine vulnerability mixed in with her shrewdness. But, I guess that is really the mark of good writing, that both those things can exist in a very alive way at the same moment. Brunner: Why do you believe it’s important to tell this story now? Baron: The play is partially a period piece set both in 1999 and in the present day. In setting it in 1999, on the eve of the millennium, Rajiv was looking back at a time where we all collectively worried it might be the end of the world, with Y2K, and all the panic surrounding that. And we’re again in a time when many of us are feeling an equal sense of world-ending dread. And now there is no direct endpoint, no January 1, 2000, in which we wake up and we realize Y2K didn’t happen. That there was no disaster and we’re all fine. Now, many of us feel we're in a longer-term unfolding disaster. Not just with the climate, but with the dismantling of political democratic structures that we all assumed were firmly in place. The play looks at a more innocent time in our level of apocalyptic fears and compares it to our current state of high alert. It's both nostalgic for an earlier time, and a clear-eyed look at where we've arrived at. And it’s also a love letter to the peace corps—to the idealism inherent in international work, in community service, and to a time in which our government valued that work. Now, those kinds of programs are being dismantled. There is no more belief in the necessity of altruistic programs like the Peace Corps. And because this play was written before this administration came to power, it is in some ways a heartbroken love letter to an earlier version of America. Diana Ragland Follow me on Twitter. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades