A Confused but Intriguing Musical History Lesson

Review: Shuffle Along

Brandon Victor Dixon as Eubie Blake and Audra McDonald as Lottie Gee in Shuffle Along.

Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed is an unwieldy title for an unwieldy musical. Like its title, Shuffle Along is both innately intriguing and a tad too long-winded to wrap your head around. It is simultaneously a character-driven backstage drama, a sprawling historical panoply about the history of black entertainment, and a metatheatrical rumination on the transient nature of fame and influence. And yet it isn't really any of those things, and that tonal disparity is what ultimately stops Shuffle Along and its hugely talented cast and creative team from achieving the success you'd expect.

The original Shuffle Along is remembered as little more than a footnote in musical theatre history, primarily famous for being the first Broadway musical written, produced, and starring people of color. Tony-winning writer/director George C. Wolfe obviously wants to change that, having turned his attention towards the people behind the show's runaway success (it ran for almost 500 performances at a time when most shows struggled to reach 100). Wolfe has kept most of the original Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake songs, but has written an entirely new libretto shifts the focus behind the scenes of Shuffle Along's rocky road to Broadway, examining how its success impacted the lives of the many strong personalities involved in its creation.

Wolfe's interests are many and varied, and while that certainly keeps the show engaging it doesn't always keep it coherent. Wolfe can't decide whether he wants the show to function as an elaborately staged history lesson or a more traditional book musical, one which hits many of the same beats as countless backstage tales before it. Try as he might, the gifted dramatist can't have things both ways, resulting in a show with some great moments and searing one-liners but which lacks a unifying structural or thematic element to tie the disparate pieces together. Wolfe also hasn't quite covered up the holes left by the many cuts made during the show's extended preview period, where it originally clocked in at over 3 hours. It now lasts a more manageable 2 hours 45 minutes, but there are multiple instances where ideas or scenes seem underdeveloped or artificially shortened.

While Wolfe the Writer hasn't quite ironed out all of Shuffle Along's kinks, Wolfe the Director has so expertly staged what's there that you only realize the show doesn't quite track in hindsight. It opens on a bare stage as the evening's players slowly appear, materializing out of the mists of history to tell their story; it almost suggests the entire evening takes place in some kind of metatheatrical dreamscape, an interesting theatrical conceit that is largely dropped during the middle section only to reappear towards the finale. Santo Loquasto's many set pieces travel on and off the stage at a dizzying pace, with some scenes taking place in front of fully realized environments and others only suggested by the simplest piece of furniture. Wolfe choreographs this dance of performers and scenery like the master he is, and individually every moment of the show works on a guttural level. Only when you try to figure out how the previous moment relates to the one that follows do the cracks and leaps in logic start to show.

Whenever things start to move beyond Wolfe's ability to maintain interest, he wisely lets Tony-winning tap legend Savion Glover's choreography take over. Glover's routines are dynamic and thrilling, innately theatrical in their surprising and precise rhythms. His ability to deploy dancers on a stage is awe-inspiring, with ever-shifting formations of talented tappers commanding both your attention and respect. Glover's choreography for the opening "Broadway Blues" sets a bar the rest of the show never quite clears, although it comes awfully close during the train station montage "Pennsylvania Graveyard Shuffle" and the "Rang Tang/Chocolate Dandies" dance battle.

Shuffle Along also features the starriest collection of Tony-winning and nominated performers Broadway has seen in quite some time, an embarrassment of riches all given their time in the spotlight. Headlining the cast is six time Tony Award-winner Audra McDonald as the show-within-a-show's leading lady Lottie Gee, and as always the theatrical legend delivers a sensational performance. This is a decidedly different McDonald than we've seen during her past few Broadway outings, allowing the acclaimed actress an all-too-rare chance to show her lighter side and flex her comedic muscles. She also gets the chance to show off every color imaginable in her heaven-sent soprano, from her toe-tapping "(I'm Just) Wild About Harry" to a jazzy rendition of the title song to an exquisitely sung and utterly heartbreaking "Memories of You." As with everything, McDonald applies herself 110% here, creating yet another richly realized and utterly believable performance.

No one else gets the same amount of stage time as McDonald, but that doesn't stop the many supporting players from making strong impressions. Past Tony nominees Brandon Victor Dixon and Joshua Henry make for a fine vaudeville pair as composers Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, with Henry in particular doing his best work to date as the proud, dignified Sissle. Meanwhile, Tony winners Brian Stokes Mitchell and Billy Porter play bookwriters F.E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles with panache. Mitchell's easygoing command of the stage acts as a nice counterbalance to the antics of the other three, leading the rousing a cappella "Swing Along" in the middle of the first act. Porter's flamboyant performance recalls a bit more of his Lola from Kinky Boots than is strictly necessary - that particular brand of fierceness comes across as anachronistic here - but the actor is certainly charismatic and has the most overtly showstopping number with his "Low Down Blues." And relative newcomer Adrienne Warren makes quite the impression in the dual roles of the outlandish Gertrude Saunders and future star Florence Mills, especially with her transfixing performance as the later discovers her own star power under Lottie's tutelage.

As this Shuffle Along so deftly illustrates, creating a Broadway show has always been hard work, and given the increasing sophistication of the medium it's probably even harder today than it was back in 1921. So in many ways the shortcomings of George C. Wolfe's book are understandable, and this production shows the kind of unadulterated ambition that should be encouraged and applauded even when it doesn't fully succeed. A messy, interesting show like Shuffle Along is preferable to a well executed bland one, and seeing so much Tony-worthy talent on one stage is a rare opportunity that should definitely be savored. The show may not quite equal the most famous works of the accomplished cast, but with artists of this caliber even their less successful efforts are still mighty fine.

2013 Tony Predictions: Best Actor

With the Tony Awards only days away, there are only two more acting races for me to predict.  They’re both very competitive categories, but if guessing Tony winners were always easy, then the actual ceremony wouldn’t be any fun!  Keep reading to find out who I think is most likely to win the Best Actor trophies, and who actually deserves them.

 

Best Actor in a Play

The Nance gives two-time Tony-winner Nathan Lane a chance to flex his comedic and dramatic acting muscles, and could end up providing the stage vet with his first non-musical Tony.

 

Nominees:  Tom Hanks, Lucky Guy; Nathan Lane, The Nance; Tracy Letts, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; David Hyde Pierce, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; Tom Sturridge, Orphans

A highly competitive category with plenty of deserving contenders, the only person I can’t picture winning here is Tom Sturridge.  Orphans met with lukewarm critical reception and closed in a flash, so the fact that this Broadway neophyte even got nominated is a huge honor.  I’m tempted to place David Hyde Pierce towards the bottom of the pack as well, but he wasn’t even on my radar the year he actually won for Curtains, so I’m wary of underestimating him.  The theatre community is also mighty high on Vanya and Sonia at the moment, which certainly works in the always-exquisite Pierce’s favor.

Personally, I think Tracy Letts’ electrifying performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the most deserving of recognition.  Letts completely reinvented one of the great roles of theatrical cannon, turning the typically meek George into a frightening firebrand who dominated this superbly realized revival.  He was simultaneously charming and monstrous, and if Woolf had opened in the spring rather than the fall he would be the clear frontrunner. 

But the Tonys have a habit of rewarding Hollywood stars that prove adept at stage work, and it’s hard to find a bigger name on Broadway than two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks.  The A-lister has earned plenty of praise for his work in the late Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy, and the fact that he has turned a play about 1980s newspaper reporters into a genuine box office smash is certain to get voters’ attention.  Yet Nathan Lane received some of the best reviews of his career for The Nance, with many deeming it his strongest stage work since he swept the 2001 awards season for his work in The Producers (a performance which remains one of the great theatrical accomplishments of the new millennium).  Lane is beloved by the industry and surely counts many Tony voters among his friends, and my gut is telling me he may just pull off an upset against Hanks.

Should Win:  Tracy Letts, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Will Win:  Nathan Lane, The Nance

 

Best Actor in a Musical

 

Billy Porter as Lola, flanked by his Angels in the glitzy, gaudy, and terrifically entertaining Kinky Boots

Nominees:  Bertie Carvel, Matilda; Santino Fortana, Cinderella; Rob McClure, Chaplin; Billy Porter, Kinky Boots; Stark Sands, Kinky Boots

The Tony voters and I have repeatedly disagreed about this category in recent years.  Two seasons ago I was gunning hard for Andrew Rannells’ star-making turn in The Book of Mormon to win (the prize went to the admittedly amazing Norbert Leo Butz), and I maintain that Danny Burnstein was *robbed* when the voters overlooked his sensational work in Follies last season.  This year they didn’t even nominate what I thought was one of the most unexpectedly excellent performances of the season – Anthony Warlow’s superbly realized Daddy Warbucks in the much-maligned revival of Annie – and somehow let the merely passable Prince of Santino Fortana into the mix instead, so which way the votes will sing this year is anyone’s guess.

All that said, I do think Fortana is the least likely winner, as he isn’t even the second or third best thing about the current Cinderella “revisal.”  I would also be shocked to see Stark Sands win, because while perfectly charming the young performer is greatly overshadowed by his also-nominated costar Billy Porter.  Rob McClure is an extreme dark horse in the race, but it must be said that his performance as the title character in Chaplin was exceptional and honestly better than the questionable material deserved.  I don’t think it’s McClure’s year, but I also don’t think this is the last time he will be attending the Tonys as a nominee.

Like many of this year’s musical races, this category comes down to Kinky Boots vs. Matilda, and specifically the buzzed about drag performances at the center of those two shows.  Bertie Carvel’s turn as the villainous headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda has all the classic earmarks of Tony bait (British thespian reprising an Olivier-winning role in one of the must-see shows of the spring), elevating the kid-friendly show into something greater.  But it is impossible not to like Billy Porter’s sassy drag queen (is there any other kind?) in Kinky Boots, a campy role that grows beyond its initial archetype over the course of the show’s runtime.  There is a lot of love for Porter among the Broadway community, and he is certainly the anchor of the glitzy new musical.  He has also won most every other award of the season, making him the clear – and deserving – frontrunner here.

Will & Should Win:  Billy Porter, Kinky Boots

 

That’s it for this year’s acting awards; all that’s left to predict are the four production categories.  Look for those articles to be posted later in the week; until then, you can feed your Tony hunger by checking out all my previous posts below:

Best Actress

Best Featured Actor
Best Featured Actress
Best Book and Score
Best Direction and Choreography
Tony Nomination React
Tony Roundtable Podcast

Drag Queens Just Want to Have Fun

Review:  Kinky Boots

Whatever Lola (Billy Porter, right) wants, Lola gets.

When pop musicians decide to write a Broadway musical, they must find a way to marry the catchy melodies and repeated choruses that spell success on the radio with the more story-driven nature of modern musical theatre.  Sometimes they fail miserably, as evidenced by the ghastly, incomprehensible score Bono and the Edge created for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.  But sometimes, as in the Cyndi Lauper-scored new musical Kinky Boots, they manage to use their pop prowess to create infinitely hummable tunes that still propel the plot forward.  Kinky Boots, which also features a book by Harvey Fierstein and direction and choreography by Jerry Mitchell, is not a perfect musical, but it is a delightful first try by the eighties icon that is one of the most giddily entertaining new musicals of the past several seasons.

Based on the motion picture of the same name, Kinky Boots tells the story of Charlie Price, who inherits his father’s struggling shoe factory after the old man’s untimely death.  Stuck with a responsibility he never asked for and an entire factory’s worth of friends facing unemployment, Charlie is at the end of his rope until a chance encounter with a drag queen named Lola.  As Lola explains, finding fittingly fabulous shoes in men’s sizes can be quite the tricky feat, and Charlie realizes that creating footwear for this niche market could be his last hope of saving the factory from financial ruin.

Lauper’s signature sound adapts surprisingly well to the musical theatre form, resulting in an energetic pop score that fleshes out the story and characters through a steady stream of great melodic hooks.  The repetitive choruses occasionally betray Lauper’s pop roots, but overall the songs strike a nice balance between feeling comfortingly familiar and excitingly fresh. 

In between all the ear candy, Fierstein’s often hilarious book balances clever one-liners with an emotional honesty that makes Charlie, Lola, and their collection of quirky friends feel like genuine people rather than character archetypes.  The writer has previously explored the same themes of acceptance and defied expectations in his previous drag extravaganza La Cage aux Folles, but Kinky Boots is so charmingly executed that the repetition hardly matters.  Fierstein displays a consistent gift for story structure and characterization that is all too rare in today’s musicals, and Boots is another strong addition to his sterling resume.

Director/choreographer Mitchell does well by the material, although his work here lacks the inventiveness and wit of his surprisingly strong staging for Legally Blonde.  The biggest problem is that while full of pep and vigor, the score is surprisingly short on full-blown production numbers, giving Mitchell relatively few opportunities to make full use of his choreographic gifts.  This is in no way meant to imply the other songs are anything less than superb, but they don’t quite play to the director’s strengths.  On the positive side, the few production numbers that are present are an obscene amount of fun, particularly the Act I finale “Everybody Say Yeah.”

The talented writers are aided by an equally talented cast, and while there are many standouts, the heart and soul of Kinky Boots is the divinely divaliscious Billy Porter as Lola.  Kicking the show into high gear with his first appearance, Porter possesses a magnetic stage presence that fills the Al Hirschfeld to the bursting point.  His Lola embodies the combination of camp and sincerity that defines Kinky Boots as a whole, and if anything Porter could probably go slightly more over-the-top without harming the show’s entertainment quotient.  Late in the show Charlie describes the “great gaping gap” Lola leaves behind when she exits a room, and so it is whenever Porter leaves the stage; thankfully, he always reappears quickly, and in increasingly fantastic ensembles to boot.

Stark Sands graduates to leading man status with aplomb, imbuing Charlie with an approachable Everyman quality while preserving the character’s individuality.  Sands’ two big solos don’t quite land the way you’d like them to, but the golden-voiced performer acts the hell out of his book scenes and maintains a refreshing level of credibility throughout.  Annaleigh Ashford brings a delightful level of camp to her relatively minor role of Lauren, and her “The History of Wrong Guys” is the most outright hilarious song in the show.  And while the entire ensemble deserves mention, special kudos must be given to the six drag Angels who provide frequently outrageous background business without ever upstaging queen bee Lola.

Visually, the show strikes the perfect balance between the working class realities of its industrial setting and the kitschy fantasy world of Lola and her Angels.  David Rockwell’s unassuming but surprisingly versatile factory set seamlessly reconfigures itself into a tiny flat, Lola’s underground club, and even a boxing ring (an unexpected second act diversion which the Angels turn into a magnificently campy highlight).  Costumer Gregg Barnes deserves a Tony nomination for the Angels’ finale outfits alone, but this gifted designer is equally at home dressing the blue-collar factory workers and the bourgeois members of Milan’s fashion elite.  And the titular boots look as gloriously gaudy as you could possibly hope, adding immensely to the show’s already sizable appeal.

Coming off a decidedly lackluster fall for new musicals, Kinky Boots feels like a godsend.  It is an unabashedly entertaining show filled to the brim with charm and good humor, and sports an always relevant message about accepting yourself and others for who they are.  The entire cast is filled with talented performers using all their varied gifts to entertain, with Billy Porter’s Lola emerging as one of the most memorable characters to sashay across the Broadway stage in several seasons.  Those searching for an evening of high art will be disappointed, but they were never the target audience of this show to begin with.  The rest of us can – and should – revel in Kinky Boots’ delightfully daffy spell.

PS - This is my 100th post!  Thank you everyone for reading.  Here's to the next 100 :-)