DOCTOR JAZZ
 |
| Lola Falana, Hector Jaime Mercado. |
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is to my three The Encyclopedia of the New
York Stage volumes (covering every New York play, musical, revue, and
revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the prefaces to any of the entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
 |
| Lola Falana, Bobby Van, and company of Doctor Jazz. |
DOCTOR JAZZ
[Musical/Music/Prostitution/Race/Show Business/Southern] B/M/LY: Buster Davis;
ADD. M/LY; King Oliver, Howard Melrose, Jack Coogan, J.L. Morgan, Eubie Blake,
E. Ray Goetz, Harry von Tilzer; A.J. Piron, Swanstone, McCarren, and Morgan; D/CH:
Donald McKayle; EPS: John Berry; S/C: Raoul Pene du Bois; L: Abe Feder; P: Cyma
Rubin; T: Winter Garden Theatre; 3/19/75-3/22/75 (5)
A barrage of critical bombs fell on
this “(mostly) disastrous” (Clive Barnes), “noisy, sluggish and senseless enterprise”
(Douglas Watt). The show lasted less than a week.
The sexy, highly talented dancer Lola
Falana (“a handgrenade of a woman,” said Barnes) was wasted, as were such other
fine performers as Bobby Van and Lillian Hayman, in this misguided try at
tracing the history of jazz, from its birth in a New Orleans cathouse district
in 1917 to its performance in Chicago and New York.
 |
| Bobby Van, Lillian Hayman |
The backstage story concerns a white,
would-be trumpeter (Van), who discovers a poor, black, country girl named Edna
Mae (Falana) doing menial tasks at her aunt’s Storyville whorehouse. He turns
her into a successful singer-dancer in the show biz world of the big Northern
cities, while he himself eventually realizes his horn-tooting ambitions back in
Storyville.
 |
| Bobby Van, Joan Copeland. |
The musical, ranging in time from 1917
to the mid-20s, was done with a careless sense of period, had a “flaccid” book,
and even limper characters. Some decent old jazz standards were heard—the list
of contributors is impressive—but Buster Davis’s original score was “pretty
awful,” according to Watt. Donald McKayle’s staging was barely serviceable
although his choreography received some favorable attention. Martin Gottfried,
for one, said, “This is the dancingest new musical of the season.” But he also
said that the story was told through too many vague and fragmented scenes, the evening
lacked smooth continuity, and it ended as a “lavish, shallow, senseless product”
of the Broadway show machine.
Despite the flack hitting the show, Lola Falana was nominated for a Best Actress, Musical, Tony Award, Raoul Pene du Bois was nominated for his costume designs, and McKayle for his choreography. Several actors, most notably Joan Copeland (pictured above), were cut from the show during its 42 previewis.
Previous Entries:
Abelard and Helo/ise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part
II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow
Cold Feet
Conditions of Agreement
Coney Island Cycle
The Constant Wife
The Contractor
The Contrast
The Constant Wife
The Country Girl
Crazy Now
The Creation of the
World and Other Business
Creeps
The Crucible
Crystal and Fox
Cyrano
Dames at Sea
The Dance of Death
Dance wi’Me/Dance with
Me
A Day in the Life of
Just about Everyone
Dear Nobody
Dear Oscar
The
Desert Song
Diamond
Studs
Different
Times
The Dirtiest
Show in Town
The
Divorce of Judy and Jane
Do It
Again!
