Media Archive

When Griffin Matthews flew off to Uganda in 2005, he had no idea he’d return with a sense of purpose, a love life and a musical.

The A.R.T does it again with WITNESS UGANDA a vibrant, moving world premiere production, that tells a modern true story of the power and the dark side of philanthropy(!) and stars the actual gay, black, Christian man who lived it.

Uganda threatens to join Oklahoma and Brigadoon as a favored musical-theater destination.

Here presented in its world premiere and masterfully directed by Diane Paulus, it tells the story of an African-American actor, tired of pounding the pavement in New York, who volunteers to go to Uganda to help build a village school just outside the capital city of Kampala. 

Perhaps because Gould and Matthews don’t play up the pathos — they’re just telling a true story, honestly and artfully — it’s all the more overwhelming when it catches you unawares.

It’s hard to imagine a more achingly personal musical than “Witness Uganda.” And that’s what helps to make this world premiere at American Repertory Theater so involving – and, in many ways, so remarkable.

Few of us would think of turning one of our life experiences into a musical or have the vision and talent to pull it off. But the young Griffin Matthews has done so with the help of co-creator Matt Gould.

It is a stirring, humorous and musically brilliant, yet somehow relaxed, narrative of one frustrated young man’s journey of personal discovery and understanding.

Fasten your seat belts, readers of The White Rhino Report, for this show evoked in me a great deal of thought and emotion, and I want to share these things in depth with you as I review the show that had last evening’s audience weeping in catharsis and shouting and clapping in joy.