152. AFTER MIDNIGHT
If your tastes run to theatrical filet
mignon, I advise DOMESTICATED at Lincoln Center or the Shakespeare plays in rep
at the Belasco, but if what you’re looking for is the indulgence of a hot fudge
sundae, with all the works, you could do worse than swinging on over to the
Brooks Atkinson for AFTER MIDNIGHT, an hour and a half revue providing uninterrupted
musical whipped cream. The show, developed from an earlier work called COTTON
CLUB PARADE, seen in the City Center Encores! Series, is getting the full
Broadway treatment.
From left: Daniel J. Watts, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Phillip Attmore. Photo: Matthew Murphy.
AFTER
MIDNIGHT has a very simple concept. It intends to recapture the kind of singing
and dancing entertainment once associated with Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club,
a nightclub whose entertainers were black and its audience white. But the show
completely avoids any such historical/racial context, preferring instead to tie
all the acts together with some poetic bits and pieces from Langston Hughes
delivered by Dulé Hill as a smooth MC who also sings and dances. If you recall
him from TV’s “The West Wing,” you’ll be happy to know that he has decent musical
theatre skills, although he gets to use them only sporadically here.
Center: Virgil "Lil'O" Gadson; right: Karine Plantadit. Photo: Matthew Murphy.
The
show is little more than a succession of acts, any one of which could easily be
moved around from one slot to the other, with the music selected from the songs
of Duke Ellington, Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen, Sippie Wallace, Dorothy Fields
and Jimmy McHugh, Cab Calloway, and others, with the majority coming from the
great Mr. Ellington. The Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars, a 16-piece orchestra,
sits upstage on a sliding platform while the acts are performed in front of it.
An act comes on, finishes, walks off as the lights dim, and another act comes
on as the lights come up. Continuity is provided by the Cotton Club aura, not
by any narrative thread. So there’s not much to chew on, but there’s plenty of
singing and dancing to ingest.
Headlining
the show is “American Idol” winner Fantasia Barrino, who already has earned
Broadway laurels for THE COLOR PURPLE; she has the audience in the palm of her
hands whenever she appears, singing such
standards as “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Stormy Weather,” “Zaz Zuh
Zaz,” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” Ms. Barrino has great stage
presence, knows how to relish a lyric, has a terrific voice, and moves with
sensual authority. She’s scheduled to remain in the show for several months,
after which she’ll be replaced by k.d. lang (in an all-black revue?), and then
Toni Braxton and Babyface, with others to follow down the line.
Among
the featured players making a big impression are Adriane Lenox, singing “Women
Be Wise” and “Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night”; dancer Karine Plantadit in
several numbers, especially “Black and Tan Fantasy”; and Dormeshia
Sumbry-Edwards doing “The Skrontch,” “Raisin’ the Rent” and “Get Yourself a New
Broom.” Two male dancers, the diminutive terpsichorean acrobat Virgil “Lil’o”
Gadson, and the unforgettably loose-limbed, double-jointed Julius “iGlide”
Chisholm, are sensational, both singly and when paired, while Jared Grimes
earns his niche on the roster of great tap dancers. A sizable ensemble of
gifted performers helps fill out many of the acts, and gives the audience a
rousing send-off in the final number, when the entire company appears.
But
as many others have noted, despite the array of talented singers and dancers,
the performers who make the event truly memorable are the members of the Jazz
at Lincoln Center All Star, an orchestra of woodwinds, trumpets, trombones,
tuba, piano, guitar, bass, and drums that is simply fantastic; when the show
has seemingly ended, and the curtain calls are over, their platform stage glides forward for a
mini-concert that lifts you out of the theatre with music in your heart.
John
Lee Beatty’s relatively simple set is a series of false prosceniums to which
appropriate elements are added as necessary, and Howell Binkley’s lights do a
great job of creating the colorful revue atmosphere. Isabel Toledo’s costumes
are knockouts, recreating old Harlem’s nightclub world, from the women’s
sequined gowns to the men’s tails and top hats.
As
I’ve said, there’s not much food for thought in AFTER MIDNIGHT, but if music be
the food of love, play on.