Entertainment

‘Fela’ needed more Felas

Former “Guiding Light” star Kevin Mambo, who’s also a musician, is one of the two leads in “Fela!”

WHY does “Fela!” have two leads on Broadway when it had one off?

Chalk it up to two more shows a week. Or maybe, as Kevin Mambo puts it, “Fela’s spirit takes up so much room, it takes two guys to play him!”

Oddly enough, the former “Guiding Light” star, who’s also a musician, had his own Fela tribute — partying like it was 1979 up on 134th Street, where he and his band re-created the Nigerian singer’s club, the Shrine.

By the time the folks at “Fela!” sought an understudy for Sahr Ngaujah, then off-Broadway, Mambo was onto the next thing: the critically acclaimed play “Ruined,” in which he played the overbearing (and heavy) heavy, Commander Osembenga.

Then Broadway beckoned, and the folks at “Fela” realized they needed two leads. The 37-year-old Zimbabwe native decided to audition.

“We looked at between 60 and 70 guys, and Kevin, like Sahr, made an impression I never forgot,” says director Bill T. Jones.

Then again, he adds, “Kevin was a big guy and I couldn’t imagine seeing him in pink spandex” — a fabric of which Fela was fond.

That was 45 pounds ago. Two gyms, two trainers, one diet — lots of raw fish, no carbs — and regular six-mile runs through Central Park slimmed Mambo down to shimmying speed.

And if the two leads seem to portray different faces of the same life force — Ngaujah’s the more genial and joyous Fela; Mambo, fiercer but somehow more fragile — at least the leads get along.

“Sahr was an incredible help,” Mambo says. “We have a great time.”

They also agree on this: that 27 wives — as Fela had — are more than either one could handle.

Says Mambo, who lives with his girlfriend in Brooklyn: “One wife at a time seems plenty to me!”