Well, hello, Louis! Add another talent to the already prodigious roster of Louis Armstrong: Jazz giant, trumpeter par excellence, great American vocal stylist and, now, the rare musical historical figure powerful and charismatic enough to drape a jukebox musical around and come out a victor.
A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, starring a terrific James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton) as the legendary Satchmo, opens on Broadway tonight at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, and if it doesn’t escape every pitfall of the jukebox musical, it certainly comes closer than most. Wonderful World is too expansive in chronological scope to delve too deeply into the crucial question of what made Armstrong such an incomparable figure in the history of American music, but with Iglehart and a fine supporting cast of excellent singer-actresses portraying Armstrong’s four wives – Dionne Figgins as Daisy Parker, Jennie Harney-Fleming as Lil Hardin, Kim Exum as Alpha Smith and Darlesia Cearcy as Lucille Wilson – the musical rarely gives us enough time to ponder what’s being left out. What we’re seeing on stage is too entertaining.
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The production has assembled a strong creative team that’s up to the challenge presented by the towering figure of the great Armstrong. With music from the great American (and Americana) songbook and jazz standards, a more-than-workable book by Aurin Squire (TV’s This Is Us), direction by Christopher Renshaw and co-direction by Christina Sajous and Iglehart, Wonderful World takes the audience from New Orleans to Chicago, Los Angeles and New York through the 20th Century, treating us to some of the most superb music of the century.
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Here are just some of the songs included in the musical: “Basin Street Blues, ”“It’s Tight Like That,” “Up a Lazy River,” “Black and Blue,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?,” “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” “Tiger Rag,” “You Rascal You,” “Cheek to Cheek,” “St. James Infirmary” and, of course, the classics most closely associated with Armstrong like “Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Hello, Dolly!” and, inevitably, the tune that provide the show its title, “What a Wonderful World.”
With the great Branford Marsalis on board to ensure the orchestrations and arrangements have the proper swing and sting of authenticity, these classic tunes are given every bit of loving attention they deserve. Valuable contributions are provided by Daryl Waters (Music Supervision, Vocal and Incidental Arrangements, and Additional Orchestrations), Zane Mark (Dance Arrangements), Darryl G. Ivey (Music Direction) and David Lai (Music Contractor). (Mention should be made, too, of Annastasia Victory and Michael O. Mitchell, the husband-and-wife team who arranged and orchestrated versions of this musical through five years of pre-Broadway production; whatever creative disagreements with producers led to their departure from the show just several months ago, Wonderful World certainly owes them thanks.)
Structured around Armstrong’s four marriages – each represents a specific time and locale in Armstrong’s life and career – Wonderful World marks its movement through the 20th Century with top-notch detail in Rickey Tripp’s choreography, Toni-Leslie James’ vibrant costumes, Matthew Armentrout’s wig and hair design, and scenic and video design by Adam Koch and Steven Royal. Cory Pattak’s lighting design is lovely and Kai Harada’s sound design thrilling in its presentation of the abundant ear candy.
Following a brief prologue, the show proper begins in the New Orleans of the 1910s, where the young Louis gets a sentimental education in music and love – and brutal lessons in the racism that would haunt him all his life. In love with the switchblade-swinging prostitute Daisy, Armstrong immerses himself in Dixieland, Americana, and even riverboat culture. Witness to a lynching, Armstrong determines to flee to Chicago, with or without the resistant Daisy. (She stays behind, but not, to Louis’ later dismay, for long).
In 1920s Chicago, Armstrong learns the ins and outs of the latest citified jazz and swing, and falls for the piano-playing Lil, who becomes his second wife (the legalities of marriage and divorce will remain a bit amorphous for most of Armstrong’s life) as well as his musical collaborator and, with her sharp mind for business, his manager. Here, Armstrong also learns of gangsters. Result: Los Angeles, and another divorce.
1930s Hollywood brings Armstrong a lucrative, if soul-crushing, new career in film (and a new wife, the starstruck Alpha, not nearly as compliant and dizzy as she lets on). Finding a place in white Hollywood necessitates a dispiriting accommodation to a new face of bigotry: unlike the Klansman of New Orleans or the thugs of Chicago, Hollywood’s bigots appear jovial, praising Armstrong’s film performances even as they dismiss is as so much monkeyshine – yes, that’s how one director puts it.
For the first time in his life, Armstrong questions the price fame and fortune exacts on his soul. Enter one Lincoln Perry (the fabulous Dewitt Fleming Jr., doubling as the show’s tap choreographer), a wealthy Black movie star who, off camera, carries himself with dignity, class and all the material goods his success has brought. How does he manage it? By turning himself into Stepin Fetchit for the camera, providing a clueless and racist Hollywood with a non-threatening holdover from minstrelsy.
The character’s arrival also provides Wonderful World with one of its best scenes, as Perry and Armstrong share a heart-to-heart on how men and women like them survive in Hollywood: As Perry puts it, Armstrong needs to get himself a hustle. Perry’s hustle is Stepin Fetchit. Armstrong decides his will be The Smile, a big ear-to-ear grin that puts whites at ease and serves as his very own lifelong armor. (The scene includes a memorable and appropriate song-and-dance duet on “When You’re Smiling.”)
Finally, when the sacrifices demanded by Hollywood become too great, Armstrong departs for yet another city – and another wife. New York of the 1940s beckons, as does cafe culture and the Cotton Club, where Armstrong meets the beautiful singer known in the Club as Brown Sugar, but offstage as Lucille. The two settle in Queens, New York – where they will keep a home for the rest of Armstrong’s life – but blissful domesticity won’t come fast or easy.
It’s this final segment that finds Armstrong reckoning with the sacrifices his conciliatory demeanor has exacted over the years. During a newspaper interview, just as the Southern violence of the Civil Rights Era plays out on the television, Armstrong holds back no more and, in no uncertain terms, expresses his anger and contempt for the country, the president and the racism that mark them both.
His career at a newfound low, Armstrong is handed an offer by his loyal, if shady, manager (Jimmy Smagula), a new show tune – Armstrong hates them – from a soon-to-be Broadway hit. “Hello, Dolly!” resurrects his career, knocks the Beatles off the top of the charts and will keep the singer in money and fame for the rest of his life, which comes to an end in 1971.
Despite no shortage of marvelous music, excellently arranged and performed – Iglehart does a near miraculous impersonation of Armstrong while infusing enough of his own personality into the character to keep things from the museum – Wonderful World falls short in a few ways, notably in failing to demonstrate just what, exactly, Armstrong contributed to the creation of Jazz, America’s great artistic achievement (and so Armstrong’s). While it’s book is considerably better than that of MJ: The Michael Jackson Musical, the Jackson musical has the edge on doing a more thorough job of showcasing what, exactly, made the Thriller superstar so vital to the development of music in the 1980s.
Unfortunately, Wonderful World also stumbles when it can least afford to: The end. After avoiding the sentiment and maudlin hagiography that sinks so many jukebox musicals (most recently, A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical), director Renshaw and book writer Squire just can’t resist sending the great Satchmo (as well as his latest audience) off into the great hereafter in puffs of stage fog, choir robes and emotional goo. “What A Wonderful World,” the 1959 song that would become his signature tune, certainly is beloved, but it has always flirted with nostalgic sap, saved only by Armstrong’s gravelly delivery and an emotional gravitas that holds the nostalgia at bay and keeps it rooted in the here and now. Pushing it into the there and later does neither the song nor the show any favors. Fortunately, a musical and a central performance with so much good will can afford the toll.
Title: A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical
Venue: Broadway’s Studio 54
Director: Christopher Renshaw
Co-Directors: Christina Sajous and James Monroe Iglehart
Book: Aurin Squire
Music: Songs From The Career of Louis Armstrong
Cast: James Monroe Iglehart, Darlesia Cearcy, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Kim Exum, Dionne Figgins, DeWitt Fleming Jr., Jason Thomas Forbach, Gavin Gregory, Jimmy Smagula and Brandon Louis Armstrong, Wesley J. Barnes, Willie Clyde Beaton II, Ronnie S. Bowman, Jr., Eean S. Cochran, Kate Louissaint, Matt Magnusson, Jodeci Milhouse, Alysha Morgan, Khadijah Rolle, Tally Sessions, Brett Sturgis, Renell Taylor, Meridien Terrell, and Dori Waymer. James T. Lane plays Armstrong at certain performances.
Running time: 2 hr 35 min (including intermission)