68. STORYVILLE
Storyville
was a fabled New Orleans red-light district, named for politician
Sidney Story, located near the French
Quarter, and conspicuously active from the 1890s until 1917. It was a place
where the races mingled freely and where many, mistakenly, believe jazz was
born. STORYVILLE, the 1977 musical being unevenly given its first New York staging by the estimable York Theatre
Company, is an earnest attempt to recapture this legendary district’s passion,
vitality, musical genius, and subculture of prostitution, gambling,
and criminal activity. It was a place where, as in Edo-period Japan, you could
actually buy books (called “Blue Books”) to explain what was available in the
local brothels; the show includes a song called “The Blue Book,” but, oddly,
makes little attempt to explain its context. In 1917, the year in which the
show is set, Storyville was closed to US military personnel for reasons of “social
hygiene,” and this was essentially the district’s end. Although the show suggests
that Storyville was razed in 1917, this did not happen until the Great
Depression, but, essentially, 1917 is when Storyville ceased to exist. We are
led to believe that with its closing its special music, having lost its home, moved
north where it caught on, taking the world by storm.
STORYVILLE. Photo: Carol Rosegg.
The show’s lumbering book is by Ed
Bullins and the sometimes jubilant, sometimes disposable music and lyrics are
by Mildred Kayden. The musical numbers, generally well choreographed by
Mercedes Ellington (Duke’s granddaughter), are the chief reason for visiting STORYVILLE,
although not all the performers are on the same level; still, there's an
abundance of talent on display, and enough spirited songs and dances, many of
them jazz and Dixieland pastiches, to keep your feet tapping and your spirits
lifted. Sadly, those spirits come crashing down when the book takes over, not
only because of its humdrum complications but because the characters are so clichéd
and the nonmusical acting so leaden and dully paced. Director Bill Castellino errs
seriously in failing to maintain the same level of heightened enthusiasm in the
book scenes that comes across during the singing and dancing.
A boxer-trumpet player from Chicago
named Butch “Cobra” Brown (Kyle Robert Carter) arrives in Storyville to shake
up the musical landscape dominated by trumpeter Hot Licks Sam (Michael Leonard
James), and immediately has his trumpet stolen. Needing a job, he takes one as a bouncer at a club run by the corrupt
mayor, a white man named Mickey Mulligan (D.C. Anderson), and is soon falling
in love with the joint’s hot singer, a dark-skinned beauty called Tigre Savoy
(Zakiya Young, a standout). But sizzling sexpot Fify Foxy (a terrific Debra
Walton), also has her eyes on him. There's also a subplot concerning a dashing
French boulevardier, Baron Fontainebleau (Carl Wallnau), involved in the local
opium trade but also the proprietor of a Parisian nightclub called Charlie’s
Bar, where he wants to install Tigre as the main attraction (think Josephine Baker).
Serving as a narrator through all this is Countess Willy Danger (Ernestine
Jackson), dressed in a top hat and man’s evening duds, with her short hair slicked
down, and performing with a sinister charm that made me think of what a
lipsticked Ben Vereen might have looked like playing the MC in CABARET. (During
his preshow speech, artistic director Jim Morgan playfully drew attention to
the resemblance between the character’s name and the handle of Carlos Danger
used by Anthony Weiner to one of the women he sexted.) There are two more or
less big climaxes; in one, Butch is forced against his will to take part in a
prize fight (staged in slow motion with freeze frames) during which a white
sailor is stabbed by someone else, a crime Mulligan threatens to blame Butch
for if he doesn’t follow Mulligan’s orders (a plot setup, by the way, that gets
lost in the shuffle); in the other, Hot Licks and Butch compete against each
other in a trumpet solo contest. The trumpet playing, however, is mimed and
Stanton Davis, one of the show’s musicians, can be seen in the shadows upstage doing
the actual horn blowing, thereby destroying the credibility of the moment. It
doesn’t help when an actor removes the instrument from his mouth while the
music is still playing.
James Morgan’s well-conceived set
opens the small stage space up to accommodate a seven-member band seated on
upstage platforms within an ambience that evokes an old-time saloon, with a
small stage at stage right and a brick pillar and staircase leading off at
stage left. The walls are plastered with faded photos and magazine articles
displaying pulchritudinous prostitutes of the day (could these have been copied
from actual blue books?); a sepia-toned skyline of old New Orleans is seen over
the stage proper. Michael Gottlieb’s lighting goes a long way to creating the
period atmosphere, and Nicole Wee’s costumes look just right for the world on
view.
Ms. Kayden’s music ranges from full-throated ballads, none
of which are especially noteworthy, and foot-stomping, hand-clapping, jazzed-up
numbers, which usually manage to get the joint jumping. Some songs grow out of
the story and move it along; others are merely there for their entertainment
value and have no relation to the book. One of the best numbers belongs to
NaTasha Yvette Williams, as Mama Magique, a super-plus-sized Creole conjure woman,
who blasts us away with “The Best Is Yet to Be,” and makes us wish the show had
given her more to sing. Dancer Leajato Robinson does a fine soft shoe number, “Good
Feet Punchie,” but it uses so many tap steps that the absence of steel plates
on his shoes makes it less impressive than it might otherwise be. The show
opens with a mournful funeral dirge, “The Funeral,” as the company marches down
the center aisle carrying what looks like a baby’s coffin (unexplained), and
ends with a joyous company routine, “Call the Children Home,” which keeps the
audience clapping rhythmically through the curtain calls.
Most audiences will find that STORYVILLE provides enough musical aspirins to ease its dramaturgical pains. Pain and pleasure--a perfect recipe for a show set in the red-light district. What's your threshold?
