By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“)
The dark days of the COVID shutdown brought the theatre community to its knees. Unable to perform in front of live audiences or to connect to one another due to health restrictions, some performers kept themselves occupied by baking, writing or, in James Monroe Iglehart’s case, watching a documentary on Louis Armstrong, considered one of the most important jazz innovators in history.
Quite improbably, Iglehart had never heard of Armstrong, who famously had as many nicknames as he had wives in his life. This was propitious because it made him curious about whether he might be able to attach his Tony-Award winning name to any existing projects that were out there on the historic figure.
It turns out there was one and it was a $1.2 million dollar project that had been created by Andrew Delaplain and Tony-nominated director Christopher Renshaw along with the folks on the Miami New Drama stage. The cost of the world premiere production of A Wonderful World was four times the cost of a typical production. Written by TV scriptwriter Aurin Square (“This Is Us”) and directed by Renshaw, it garnered some positive press, but lay dormant during the COVID shutdown.
Enter the redoubtable Mr. Iglehart, who was already chomping at the bit to portray Armstrong. In typical Broadway arranged partnerships, he joined with the project with the anticipation it would first go on the road to prove the show. Since Satchmo started his career on the streets of New Orleans before moving to Chicago and spending the rest of his life in New York (he lived out his life in Queens), the producers determined that the two extended out-of-town tryouts would be held first in New Orleans and then journey up the Mississippi River to Chicago prior to finding a Broadway theater.
Of course, Iglehart was tabbed to portray King Arthur in the recent revival of Spamalot, so the producers – now joined by Hollywood celebrity Vanessa Williams – decided to wait things out until Spamalot closed and they could find a proper Broadway venue.
So, following the two runs in New Orleans and Chicago and Iglehart’s starring role at the St. James Theatre, several key elements were changed. Squire rewrote much of his already revised book and New Orleans and international jazz star Branford Marsalis joined the creative team to orchestrate and revise the orchestrations.
With their lead firmly attached to the project, all four actresses who played Armstrong’s wives were replaced. In addition, Iglehart and Christina Sajous (The Who’s ‘Tommy’) signed on as assistant directors to give Renshaw additional support. This production marks both of their directorial debuts on Broadway.
Rickey Tripp handles the choreography and musical stagings quite inventively. This musical requires a nominal amount of music history, but the numbers are very important to establish different musical eras (forgive us, Taylor) occupied by Armstrong.
The early history in New Orleans is covered with “Basin Street Blues” and “Bourbon Street Parade,” two jazz classics noted for their connection to New Orleans streets. While these and many of the selections are anachronistically matched with the times represented, they do express the joy of Armstrong’s early foray into playing music for ecstatic crowds. His first wife Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins) has her solo in “Kiss of Fire,” a song meant to establish her work as a streetwalker and the fiery relationship the two enjoyed in his young manhood. A dirty blues song – “It’s Tight Like That” – also points to the sexual tension in their ill-fated marriage.
Iglehart mimics playing the trumpet throughout the work, but the trumpet players Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris do a creditable job of reverently trying to recapture the tone and power behind Satchmo’s playing and the significance of how he moved jazz from traditional ensemble work into an art form that featured prominent solo work.
Many musicologists will point to “West End Blues” as pivotal in Armstrong’s repertoire. But pieces like that do not appear in the show. This is not an academic primer or survey study – it’s a Broadway musical, after all, Instead, the intent in Act One is to give an overall arc to his career broken down in his early influences in New Orleans, his later prominence with Joe “King” Oliver’s band in the early 1920s and then on to his leadership in fronting his own ensembles like the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens.
We see Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming), the piano player in Oliver’s band as especially prescient, recognizing his true talent and potential. Hardin’s big number is one of Armstrong’s later hits, “A Kiss To Build a Dream On.” She becomes his manager and sets him on a course towards his own stardom, but the iconoclastic trumpeter feels smothered. As we learn, she was critical in putting him into the spotlight, but she became a force to be reckoned with, insisting on a sizable share of Armstrong’s rising star and financial returns.
We learn that Armstrong ran afoul of his second wife, but the contentious and litigious conflict is only lightly touched upon before the act ends as Armstrong heads off to Hollywood with wife number three, Alpha Smith, played by Kim Exum.
Exum’s big number in Act II is “Big Butter and Egg Man” a saucy little bit of double entendres mixed into a jaunty tune that she sings with tongue in cheek. Although he is rewarded for his efforts with starring roles in B pictures, Armstrong has to learn the hard truth about the studio system as being not much above a new form of enslavement. DeWitt Fleming, Jr. as Lincoln Perry, gives Armstrong some serious instruction in how to get ahead with “When You’re Smiling,” one of the shows best dance numbers that also involves some fancy dancing with the ensemble.
Like it or not, using the system by pretending to be as shiftless and irresponsible as Steppin Fetchit – Perry’s alter ego – is not what Armstrong was anxious to hear nor willing to settle for. Whatever financial advances Armstrong seemed to be making, his wife Alpha was spending it as fast as he made it. Alpha’s plaintive melody of “Ain’t No Sweet Man Worth the Salt of My Tears” ends the move to the West Coast along with his third marriage.
With a return to New York, Armstrong prepared to enter the turbulent Fifties and the Civil Rights era. It was a time of great promise and great strife. Squire’s book rightly sidesteps some of the difficulties “Pops” felt as he settled down with his final wife Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy). As happy as he tried to be, domestication was not easily achieved. His dalliance with another woman, ironically also named Lucille, produced a daughter. Her identity has not been well documented until recently.
It’s the final scenes dealing with the turbulent 1960s and the attempt to incorporate Iglehart’s jovial Armstrong with one who is despondent and tortured by racial discrimination where the story seems to go slightly off the rails. The attempt to make A Wonderful World relevant in times when the chaotic struggles for equality, assassinations and war in faraway lands made the world anything but wonderful is problematic. Gravitas works best with the blues and dealing with reality. The titillating and joyous nature of traditional jazz is better paired with expectation and fantasy.
The final numbers with his two biggest hits – “Hello Dolly” and the title track – go a long way to bringing the book back to where it belongs. This is a story about a talented man who may have been the most important to help establish the American art form of jazz. It is largely a celebration of his life and the music he helped shape.
For jazz enthusiasts in general and Armstrong lovers in particular, there’s a lot more to be admired in this musical than to naysay. Iglehart’s performance is stellar and the four leading ladies all have magnificent voices that more than amplify the story of this jazz giant and the partners he had through a half century of being a beloved national figure and international star.
A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical (2 hours and 30 minutes with a 15-minute intermission) starring James Monroe Iglehart continues its Broadway run at Studio 54, 254 W. 54th Street. For tickets click here.
