34. A WONDERFUL WORLD: THE LOUIS ARMSTRONG MUSICAL (seen November 9, 2024)

 

A Wonderful World couldn’t have come at a better time, even if you’re forced to take its title with a grain of salt. Following a week of crushingly disappointing news, this juke-box bio-musical—which premiered at Miami New Drama in 2020—is about Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1901-1971), the genial jazz icon, trumpet player, sometime movie actor, and gravelly-voiced singer. It brings a redhot  blast of enthusiastic joy—a loaded word these days—to Broadway’s Studio 54, under Roundabout Theatre auspices.

 

Gavin Gregory (rear). All photos: Jeremy Daniel.

Not that the story of Armstrong’s life doesn’t carry with it plenty of sour notes about just how less than wonderful his world really was; the show, however, which, fortunately, supports his story with the actual songs that boosted his success—rip-roaringly arranged by Branford Marsalis, with additional input from Daryl Waters—reminds us of why Armstrong remained such a beloved showman for so many years. And, with a dazzling portrayal of him by the gifted James Monroe Iglehart—whose Tony-winning Genie in Aladdin was a Broadway landmark of the last decade—A Wonderful World is, despite its obvious warts, a delightful, even wonderful, musical.

 

James Monroe Iglehart.

Like so many other bio-musicals, this one attempts to squeeze a lifetime of creative achievement and personal ups and downs into a couple of hours of stage time. It requires extreme condensation by book writer Aurin Squire to pack in as much biography as possible, while finding excuses for 28 songs (plus a few reprises). Midway through the second act, the book’s chain of biographical sketches begins to flounder, but the music usually manages to plug the leaks and keep the show afloat.

 

James Monroe Iglehart and company,

Born into poverty in New Orleans, young Louis was, for a time, nurtured by a Jewish family. When he matured and gained attention for his cornet (and then trumpet) skills, he was forced to confront racists and gangsters. His early career took off in a jazz band led by King Joe Oliver (Gavin Gregory), with whom he moved to Chicago. He eventually parted from Oliver—with friction—to go out on his own. He was beckoned by Hollywood, where he befriended the enormously successful Black comedian and former vaudevillian Lincoln Perry (DeWitt Fleming, Jr.), better known as Stepin Fetchit, and comically characterized as “the laziest man in the world.” Unlike Perry, movie stardom was not in the stars for Satchmo—a nickname whose derivation is never explained--at a time when notable Black artists barely existed in mainstream movies. In the 1950s he struggled to overcome blowback for criticizing Pres. Eisenhower regarding civil rights, but, in his final decade, Armstrong returned to popular grace with blockbuster recordings of songs like “Hello, Dolly” and the title number.

 

James Monroe Iglehart and Gavin Gregory.

Armstrong, a serial philanderer, married four women, his marriages providing the book’s chief narrative milestones. He moves from the switchblade-wielding New Orleans prostitute, Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins), to the slickly sophisticated, business-wise musician Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney Fleming), to the materialistic Alpha Smith (Kim Exum), to Cotton Club singer Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy), who finally manages to stop his adulteries and provide him with a stable homelife.

 

Jennie Harney-Fleming and James Monroe Iglehart.

Each wife is played by an outstanding singer-actress who gets one or more knockout numbers (sometimes shared), including Daisy’s “Kiss of Fire,” Lil’s “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” and “Heebie Jeebies,” Lil and Daisy’s “Some of These Days” (sung as a warning to Louis for what he’ll suffer when they’re gone), and Alpha’s “Big Butter and Egg Man” and “Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears.”

James Monroe Iglehart.

All the songs but one (I believe)—“Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears”—were recorded by Armstrong, even those others sing. The narrative uses their lyrics and feelings to move things along, although the words don’t always fit the events precisely. But for all the extraordinary singing of these great (mostly) standards, the voice you want to hear is Iglehart’s, whose instrument so effectively captures Satchmo’s sandpaper sound—its cause is too quickly glossed over—you worry he’ll somehow strain it. 

Audiences may not be familiar with every song in the show, but the joint jumps with joy when—sometimes joined by others, including audience singalongs—Louis launches into “Avalon,” “Dinah,” “Tiger Rag,” “Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In,” “When You’re Smiling” (cue the discovery of his trademark smile), “Cheek to Cheek,” “St. James Infirmary,” and more.  

 

DeWitt Fleming, Jr., and company..

Christopher Renshaw is credited as the director, while Iglehart and Christina Sajous are credited as codirectors, whatever that eccentric arrangement entails. As Armstrong, Iglehart is a beaming, one-man charm factory, handkerchief in hand to wipe his horn, mouth, and brow, choppers bright as headlights, a N’Orleans accent saying “foist” for “first” and “goils” for “girls.” Larger in size, in each direction, than the original, Iglehart—as they say of big dancers—is light on his feet, in complete control of his physical, histrionic, and musical chores.

 

Darlesia Cearcy.

I’m not certain about his trumpet playing, though. An online article on a reputable site claims he learned to play, but no one can simply learn to play as well as Louis Armstrong. During the performance I saw, there was a timing slip when the trumpet was heard a second before the mouthpiece hit the actor’s lips, which those near me also noted. So I’ll wait for clarification from anyone who knows. At any rate, if someone else is playing the trumpet, it’s probably one of the trumpeters in the nine-piece onstage band, Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris.

 

James Monoe Iglehart and Darlesia Cearcy.

Much as Iglehart can wiggle a light-footed tootsie or two, there’s a heart-thumping ensemble (the show has 26 performers) around him to do the heavy lifting required by Ricky Tripp’s good, old-fashioned showbiz choreography and musical staging. Tripp takes us from the sexily jazzy dancers of New Orleans in the 1910s to the vaudeville style chorus lines of Chicago in the 1920s to the tap-dancing routines of Stepin Fetchit in 1930s Hollywood and beyond. Everyone looks sensational in Toni-Leslie James’s period-spanning costumes on Adam Koch and Steven Royal’s complex set of catwalks, flying backgrounds, and moving units, perfectly lit by Cory Pattak.  

 

Foreground: Jimmy Smagula, Darlesia Cearcy, James Monroe Iglehart, Jason Forbach.

A Wonderful World has a seriously imperfect book, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Don’t go looking for a serious examination of Louis Armstrong’s position in the history of jazz, for a penetrating portrayal of a complicated man whose private life was masked by a lovable persona, or for a sizzling x-ray of the racism that pervaded American entertainment in the last century. 

Just consider the flimsy biographical material a necessary premise to bring Armstrong’s music back to the stage—even when others are singing it. A Wonderful World has a polished company, a charismatic star, rousing choreography, eye-catching costumes, and all the other accoutrements of an entertaining Broadway musical. In view of what’s happening outside, the wonderful world on stage at Studio 54 does just fine.

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

Studio 54

254 W. 54^th Street, NYC

Open run

33. ORSON'S SHADOW (seen November 8, 2024)

 

Twenty-four years ago, all-around-man-of-theatre Austin Pendleton wrote a well-received play called Orson’s Shadow that had its world premiere in an admired production directed by David Cromer for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. Since then, numerous companies, here and abroad, have produced it, its successful New York premiere, again directed by Cromer, coming in 2005. The current revival at the East Village’s Theatre for the New City, codirected by Pendleton and David Schweizer, was seen there this past spring, under just Pendleton's direction, with the same cast but one: Cady McClain replaces Kim Taff as Joan Plowright.

 

Patrick Hamilton, Luke Hofmaier. All photos: Russ Rowland.

This play’s casting requirements are daunting. The chief characters—seen as they were in 1960—are Orson Welles (Brad Fryman), the controversial, overweight, American actor-director, best known for his 1940 film Citizen Kane; Sir Laurence Olivier (Ryan Tramont), whom many believe to have shared with John Gielgud the honor of being Britain’s foremost 20^th-century actor; Vivien Leigh (Natalie Menna), Olivier’s mentally ill, soon-to-be divorced wife, whose most famous role was Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind; and Joan Plowright, a rising actress who would marry Olivier a year later, and is still alive today at 95. Each would be instantly recognizable to any theatre and film lover of a certain age. A character less familiar to many would be the great British critic, Kenneth Tynan. In 1960, Welles was 45, Oliver 53, Leigh also 53, Plowright 21, and Tynan 33.

 

Patrick Hamilton, Brad Fryman.

The current revival suffers considerably from the inevitable disparity between the ages, looks, and personalities of its actors and the iconic people they’re playing; those less familiar with the originals—probably 95% of Gen Z—may not mind so much. Others will find the casting a major deterrent to acceptance.

 

Pendleton has attempted to craft a comedy-drama based on the circumstances surrounding Welles’s notorious 1960 Royal Court Theatre staging of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, an exemplar of the Theatre of the Absurd, starring Olivier in the everyman role of Berenger. It’s the part played a year later on Broadway by Eli Wallach. Olivier, soon after demonstrating that he was not limited to classical drama by giving a brilliant performance in John Osborne’s The Entertainer, hoped to show his modernist side in Ionesco’s avant-garde play. It was Zero Mostel, by the way, who stole the Broadway production in the bravura role of John, a man who, like everyone else but Berenger, succumbs to totalitarian pressures by turning into a rhinoceros. This past week demonstrated that Ionesco may have had a point.

 

Patrick Hamilton, Ryan Tramont.

Written in three acts compressed into two, with an intermission, the over two-hour play begins with Tynan visiting Welles at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre, where he’s performing his “Falstaff” adaptation, The Chimes of Midnight, to empty houses. Tynan wants to get Welles to direct Olivier’s upcoming Rhinoceros—a play Welles dislikes—as a way of getting Olivier to hire Tynan in some capacity at the newly gestating National Theatre, which Olivier will head. Welles thinks that if he can get Olivier to do the play, he’ll be able to acquire funding for a film of his Falstaff play. The action then shifts to the play’s rehearsal process, where we meet the high-strung, petulant Larry, the over 20-years-younger Joan, Welles’s raging bull of a director, and the disturbed Vivien, whose marriage to Olivier is on the rocks. Sean (Luke Hofmaier), the young stage manager from Dublin, is somehow there as well.

 

Cady McClain, Ryan Tramont.

The rehearsals are chaotic, with multiple interruptions, and serve to illustrate the clash of the giant egos involved, Welles and Olivier’s, who disagree on how to play Berenger, revealing that, no matter their status, they’re remarkably insecure. It’s hard to see how this could be of great interest to anyone but theatre nerds; even those who remember these stars well are likely to find this production (widely lauded in the spring) tedious, its humor flat (although an elderly gent in front of my laughed so often I thought he was an investor), its plot gossipy, and its characters’ artificial, regardless of how many grains of truth they’re based on.

 

Brad Fryman, Ryan Tramont, Cady McClain.

Most of what happened in 1960 has been well documented (check the Wikipedia link above), and there have been numerous books about each of the play’s principals that provide additional facts, biographical and otherwise. Pendleton does a good job assimilating many of the established anecdotes into the action but, despite energetic performances, Orson’s Shadow grows increasingly tedious. Pendleton’s use of Tynan—he even serves as the narrator—is a dramatic liberty, since the critic, although embroiled at the time in a journalistic debate about Ionesco’s merits, had nothing to do with the Rhinoceros production.

 

Natalie Menna.

The bare-stage, low-budget set (by codirector David Schweizer), featuring miscellaneous chairs and tables, does little to brighten things. Alexander Bartenieff’s lighting should be noted for a couple of shock effects—coupled with startling sounds from Nick Moore—when “Macbeth” is mentioned among these superstitious actors, who insist on saying “the Scottish play.” Billy Little’s period costumes, in this context, are  perfectly suitable, especially considering the budget's obvious limitations.

Natalie Menna, Brad Fryman.

Brad Fryman, who plays Welles, is a bearded thespian of considerable girth and flowing gray locks, with a decided theatrical edge. Resembling a cross between Zero Mostel and Al Hirschfeld, he makes Welles a passionately animated eccentric who resents being associated principally with Citizen Kane, as if he’s never gone beyond it, and resents the Hollywood butchers he blames for damaging his later films. Fryman, looking a decade older than 45, and having a gravelly voice at distinct odds with Welles’s mellifluous baritone, nevertheless has something worthy of Welles’s authoritarian demeanor; one can even imagine him as Falstaff.

 

Cady McClain, Ryan Tramont, Brad Fryman.

At the other extreme is Ryan Tramont, whose Larry Olivier is a perfect twit, moving about with intense, nervous energy as if uncomfortable in his own skin. Much as this seems written into the script, especially during the rehearsal when Olivier displays neurotic energy when trying to figure out how a line should be read. However, Tramont’s fidgety wimpishness only serves to mock Olivier’s stature and dignity.

 

Natalie Menna’s Vivien Leigh has the unenviable task of evoking one of the world’s great, if fading, beauties, suffering from a mental breakdown, reflective of her oft-cited Blanche in Elia Kazan’s movie of A Streetcar Named Desire, which she’d done on stage with Olivier direction. It drives her to try seducing Sean, the naïve youth who says he wasn’t even born when Citizen Kane was made, to make Larry jealous. The role and its staging is too exaggerated to be convincing, but Menna does the best with what she has.

 

Cady McClain’s Joan Plowright is the most convincing of the leads; crisply spoken and rational, she’s at opposite poles from her future husband’s histrionics. Patrick Hamilton’s Ken Tynan, who holds the same phony cigarette forever, rarely puffing (he’s supposed in to be a chain-smoker), speaks too fast, his faux British accent often making his words into oatmeal. And Luke Hofmaier is acceptably innocent (and ignorant) as Sean, whose presence in both the Dublin and London scenes isn’t very clear.

 

Orson’s Shadow perhaps takes its title from the influence Welles once cast, like a shadow, over those in his artistic world. Maybe it comes from Welles’s once having been the radio voice for the character known as the Shadow. Or perhaps it’s meant to reflect Shakespeare’s use of “shadow” to refer to actors. If that regard, these lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream sum up my reaction: “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear.” Truer words . . .

 

Orson’s Shadow

Theatre for the New City

155 First Avenue, NYC

 Through December 1

 

LEITER LOOKS AT BOOKS (35th edition): Cindy Rosenthal, ELLEN STEWART PRESENTS: FIFTY YEARS OF LA MAMA EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE

 

For my review of Ellen Stewart Presents please click on THEATER PIZZAZZ.

32. VLADIMIR (seen November 7, 2024)

 

 

Seeing the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Erika Sheffer’s Vladimir two days after the 2024 presidential election was painful. Not so much because the play—which closes Sunday—has problems (it does), but because of its message.

 

Norbert Leo Butz, Francesca Faridani. All photos: Jeremy Daniel.

Vladimir, set mainly in Russia in 2004, during the early years of Vladimir Putin’s regime, is about the repression of journalistic truth in an autocratic society. Judging by what we know of Donald Trump’s attitude toward the press, which he calls “fake news” when it’s critical of him or his policies, it’s impossible to watch the play without thinking that this could happen here.

 

Francesca Faridany, Erin Darke. 

Which leads one to wonder, where are the mainstream American plays that directly address the most pressing political issues of our day? Why, as in another recent Putin play, Patriots, must we go abroad to find our political villains?

 

Raya (a fiery Francesca Faridany, bearing a resemblance to Edie Falco) is a severely determined, widely read journalist writing for an independent newspaper called Moscow Novosti. Her character was inspired by Anna Politkovskaya, journalist and human rights activist. Raya’s the divorced mother of Galina (Olivia Deren Nikkanen), who’s preoccupied with her upcoming marriage to an unseen man named Sasha.

 

Raya’s vodka-swilling editor, Kostya (two-time Tony awardee Norbert Leo Butz, hyperactive), walks a tightrope in keeping his paper going in a repressive atmosphere. Kostya, for all his anti-Putin angst, accepts a job provided through a university friend, an apparatchik named Andrei (Erik Jensen), to manage a state-run TV station, an act of complicity he soon regrets.

 

Norbert Leo Butz, Erik Jensen, Jonathan Walker.

It’s the time of Russia’s conflict with Chechnya, and Raya, having been injured while covering the war there (one arm is in a cast), wants to return to further expose the human rights abuses of Russia’s military. Both Kostya and Galina, fearful for her safety, strongly oppose it. Soon enough, the stubbornly resistant Raya survives a familiar Putin method of dealing with his opposition.

 

Meanwhile, a mild-mannered Jewish accountant, Yevgeny (David Rosenberg, earnest), is asked by his American boss, Jim (Jonathan Walker), to investigate how his investment firm has become the repository for a huge tax refund. Jim is based on American businessman Bill Browder, who remains a target of Russian interest. Overcoming his initial fears, Yevgeny is practically bullied by Jim into agreeing to take on the assignment, only for him to realize his anticipated martyrdom. Yevgeny was inspired by Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered massive tax fraud committed by the Russian government.

 

David Rosenberg, Jonathan Walker.

Kostya, Raya, and Yevgeny’s stories interlock in a tale that that also introduces Chovka (Erin Darke), a Chechen terrorist/freedom fighter, call her what you will, in dream-like scenes. These all come under the mantle of the notorious Chechen 2004 attack on a Russian school in Beslan in which hundreds were killed, most of them children. The tragedy serves to emphasize the government’s disinformation campaign regarding the number of victims, a slap in the face to truthful journalism.

 

From it all, the message that seems to emerge is that authoritarian governments require brave people like Raya and Yevgeny to stand up to power and tell the truth, even at the cost of their health or lives. Not a very encouraging takeaway. The number of Russian journalists who’ve died while carrying out their duties is horrific. Seventeen have been killed since the invasion of Ukraine alone. Is the only answer to simply do one’s job until one becomes the next victim? Throughout, it’s impossible to disassociate what we’re viewing from the implication that something similar lies in store for America should we, too, be led by a power-hungry autocrat. Too late, one thinks when it’s over.

 

This is summed up near the end when the accented-Raya says: “And it make me so… mad, That one man should have such power, One. Small. Not great intellectual, not insightful, Only talent is finding ugliness and knowing how to use it. And yet this little man take up so much space. And I’m thinking… I don’t want to give this man such power.” Hearing these words so soon after the election of just such a man could not be more chilling.

 

Norbert Leo Butz, Francesca Faridany.

But such moments are few in Sheffer’s episodic, occasionally confusing, not fully convincing, two hours-plus play in which four of the play’s seven actors play multiple roles. The scenes of Galina’s wedding and Raya’s reading from her new book in New York seem extraneous.

 

Vladimir is enacted on Mark Wendland’s rather dark, unappealing set, selectively lit by Japhy Weideman, across which multiple locales are scattered, some used to represent different places according to the situation.

 

Olivia Deren Nikkanen, Francesca Faridany.

When the characters speak Russian, they do so in perfect English, but when speaking English, it’s with a grammatically imperfect Russian accent, which not all the actors have mastered. The purely Russian scenes (in English, of course) lack any sense of being other than American, from the colloquial dialogue to the way people move and express themselves. If you don’t pay attention, you might think it was all taking place in New York. 

 

There are many dramatic conflicts here, but whenever a disagreement arises it’s blown up to shouting levels by veteran director Dan Sullivan; when an argument flares into fisticuffs, the services of fight director Thomas Schall are employed. Minor as it is, another bothersome touch occurs when Kostya bursts into Raya’s apartment one night, frozen to the bone, wearing only a thin leather jacket, which no rightminded Muscovite would don on a Russian winter night. Jess Goldstein did the otherwise suitable costumes, including Galina’s wedding gown.

 

Attempts at humor sometimes streak through the Russian gloom, only a very few clicking. One that stretches credibility opens the play with a scene of Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin (unnamed in the script), about to deliver his resignation speech on December 31, 1999. He has to pee so he does something so farcical it sets the wrong tone for everything that follows. Later, farce again intrudes unnecessarily when Raya, in New York for her book talk, is introduced by an incompetent employee in a bit even SNL would have rejected.

 

Vladimir may not be the best example of a play with a contemporary political ax to grind, but it at least makes the effort, and certainly conveys strong points. We need more such plays, especially those that expose important American issues. 

For example, the notes at the end of Sheffer’s script declare: “In 2016 Vladimir Putin offered President Trump access to Russian Intelligence officials indicted in connection with 2016 DNC hacks, in exchange for allowing Russia to interrogate Bill Browder. President Trump referred to this proposition as ‘a great offer.’” Is there not a play waiting to be born from that morsel? Or must we wait until our new administration is long gone before it’s safe to go back in the dramatic waters again?

Vladimir

NY City Center Stage 1/Manhattan Theatre Club

131 W. 55^th Street, NYC

Through November 10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31. ROMEO + JULIET (seen November 1, 2024)

 

For my review of Romeo + Juliet please click on THEATER LIFE.

30. SUNSET BLVD. (seen October 31, 2024)

 

For my review of Sunset Blvd. please click on THEATER LIFE.

LEITER LOOKS AT BOOKS (34th edition): Kevin Winkler, ON BETTE MIDLER: AN OPINIONATED GUIDE

 

For my review of Kevin Winkler's ON BETTE MIDLER: AN OPINIONATED GUIDE please click on THEATER PIZZAZZ.