'Satchmo At The Waldorf' Offers A Sterling Performance by John Douglas Thompson

John Douglas Thompson as Louis Armstrong
Photo by T. Charles Erickson

There are three really good reasons to see Satchmo At The Waldorf, now on view at the Westside Theatre. 

Reason Number One: John Douglas Thompson’s powerhouse performance as iconic jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, pensive and in poor health near the end of his career and of his life. 

Reason Number Two: John Douglas Thompson’s powerhouse performance as Armstrong’s long-time manager Joe Glaser, a tough-as-nails businessman and confidant. 

Reason Number Three: John Douglas Thompson’s powerhouse performance as iconic jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, harshly judgmental of Armstrong’s popular appeal to a largely white audience through his recordings of such mainstream tunes as “Hello Dolly” and “What A Wonderful World.” 

Playwright Terry Teachout, who is the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, has written biographies of Armstrong and Duke Ellington, so he knows his way around the world of jazz performers as well as the theater.

But it is very difficult to pull off a truly original and compelling bio-play. I Am My Own Wife comes to mind as one that met both criteria, but in that case, the play's intriguing story was brought to stellar heights owing to the extraordinary performance by Jefferson Mays.

Satchmo At The Waldorf does not rise to that level save for the bravura acting, in which Thompson flips among the three characters pretty much instantaneously through shifts in body language and voice, abetted nicely by Kevin Adams’s lighting design.  As Armstrong, Mr. Thompson enters the stage in a state of exhaustion after a show; it’s a wonder he doesn’t exit in the same condition after performing for the entire 90 minutes without a break. 

The play takes place in 1970 in Armstrong’s dressing room at the Waldorf, where he and his wife Lucille (his fourth and best, he keeps reminding us) are ensconced in a suite at the luxury hotel. At the opening, he is worn and frazzled, and he barely makes it to the sofa in time to collapse and take several deep breaths through a mask attached to a tank of oxygen.

But as he starts to relax and change out of his dress clothes, he finds new momentum, and he rises to show us two tape recorders sitting on a table. One of them has recordings of his music, which we get to hear from time to time. This means, fortunately there is no pretense of trumpet playing by Thompson, though he does a fine job carrying out the rituals involved in cleaning and putting away the instrument. 

The second tape recorder is there for him to dictate his memoirs, which, of course, gives us the basis and rationale for the play.

Two themes emerge to shape the play beyond the basic stories of a life in the spotlight. One is that of public image vs. private reality. Behind the famous cheerful image of “Pops” Armstrong lay a man who knew his way around salty language, women, and reefer—learned early on growing up in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, not a cheery place for him. His mother was a prostitute and his father disappeared around the time of Armstrong’s birth in 1901. (He was also the grandson of slaves, a fact that does not come up during the course of the play). 

Armstrong began performing as a street singer in New Orleans as a pre-teen and seemed destined for a life as a street urchin and juvenile delinquent. But he also

did odd jobs for an immigrant Jewish family who treated him as one of their own and showed him a kinder and gentler way of living. During the play, Thompson sings a bit of Hebrew melody and tells us that Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life as a reminder of those happy days.

The cornet became a permanent fixture in his life around the same time, and music turned out to be Armstrong’s savior.  But it also led him into an insulated life, marked by a certain degree of naiveté in which he sometimes mistook friendliness for genuine friendship. Thus, we have the play’s second theme, that of abandonment and betrayal.

Early on, Armstrong aligned himself with Joe Glaser, who became his manager of four decades. Armstrong turned to him because he had ties to the mob and could—as he did—take care of all of the business arrangements and serve as a barrier between the performer and outside interference. But when Glaser died and failed to leave Armstrong a share of the business, the performer felt deeply betrayed.

Armstrong was also bitter that neither Glaser nor his other “pal” Bing Crosby ever invited him to their homes. But an even keener sense of being stabbed in the back came from his treatment by younger black jazz musicians who emerged during the time of the African American Civil Rights Movement. As embodied in the play by Miles Davis, that generation viewed Armstrong not as a revered mentor, but as a sell-out Uncle Tom, who, says Davis, “pulls out that hankie and starts jumping around like Jim Crow on a stick—all to make them sad white motherfuckers happy.”

Theatrically—even though the character of Davis is only given a few minutes of time—this is the most compelling element of the play. We can feel Armstrong’s pain at being rejected by the younger performers, not one of whom attended any of his shows in those later years. If you think back to his early days of actually being abandoned by his father and pretty much raising himself on the streets, it’s not difficult to connect the dots and understand why he was devastated by such treatment.

Based on these few short scenes, I would love to see a reworked play that puts Armstrong into contact with Davis and other musicians, both the rising stars and his contemporaries, instead of focusing on the performer and his deceased manager. We might lose the tour de force opportunity of one actor carrying the entire show, but I do think the dramatic tension would rise…well…dramatically.

Still, it is well worth the visit to see Satchmo At The Waldorf for the sterling performance by John Douglas Thompson. Previous outstanding work in the lead roles in Shakespeare’s Othello and Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones have shown him to be an actor to be reckoned with, and his portrayal of Louis Armstrong and the others is no exception.  

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'Kung Fu': Signature Theatre Premieres Pleasant But Shallow Bio-Play By David Henry Hwang

Cole Horibe as Bruce Lee in 'Kung Fu'

The choreography and the elements of Chinese Opera are the real winners in King Fu, David Henry Hwang’s entertaining if shallow new play based on the life of martial arts actor Bruce Lee, now on view at the Pershing Square Signature Center. 

Kung Fu, having its delayed premiere after last season’s disappointing program of Hwang’s works (a dismal Golden Child and somewhat stronger The Dance and the Railroad, which was as much an intriguing performance piece as a play) is like the CliffsNotes version of what could have been a biting satire about the difficulties of an Asian American actor trying to break through the barriers of racism in the United States in the years following World War II. 

It seems as though Mr. Hwang, who has skirted similar issues before, just does not want to go there. So what we get is an entertaining piece of fluff that only occasionally raises social issues, as Bruce Lee is unable to grab hold of the brass ring of longed-for stardom in Hollywood, and ultimately finds his success in martial arts movies only when he returns to Hong Kong. 

Throughout the play, Mr. Lee (Cole Horibe, best known as a finalist in one of the many seasons of television’s So You Think You Can Dance) is surrounded by loving martial arts students, loving friends, a loving wife (Phoebe Strole) and a loving son (Bradley Fong, a real charmer).

The only sign of discord arises in Lee’s recollections of his cold and distant father, an actor famous for playing clown roles in the Chinese Opera.  As embodied by Francis Jue, the father is the most fully realized character in the play—a frustrated, distant, angry, opium-smoking man from whom his son was long estranged.  But even here, Mr. Hwang cannot resist smoothing things over by offering up an imagined scene in which Bruce Lee and his father’s ghost battle it out, with Mr. Lee emerging whole and triumphant.  

Storywise, Kung Fu is a gentle bio-play, a Hallmark Card sort of production about nice people being nice. Only Sonya Tayeh’s choreographed moves, well performed by the entire cast, lift the production above the ordinary. 

The one bit that comes closest to spoof is the stylized portrayal of Mr. Lee’s role as Kato, the sidekick to The Green Hornet in the short-lived television series from the mid-1960s that attempted unsuccessfully to match the success of the comic book-like Batman phenomenon. Much is made of the fact that Lee had to wear a mask as Kato in order to underplay his Asian-ness, and here, at least, Mr. Hwang makes his point—although, at the same time, one wonders why Bruce Lee's having a white wife is never raised as an issue—neither in the U. S. nor in Hong Kong.    

Under Leigh Silverman's direction, the game cast members, many of whom have had little acting experience, are all quite good at performing in front of an audience.  Certainly, they’ve got the kung fu moves down, and they display a friendly upbeat energy, often leaping across multiple roles (Jon Rua, Peter Kim, and Emmanuel Brown—who also serves as the fight captain—are especially personable). 

In the end, however, even though King Fu does make for a pleasant evening, it simply has too little to say about its subject or about the Asian American experience. 

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‘Little Me’: A Fun-Time Romp from Encores!

Little Me, the 1962 Neil Simon/Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh musical, is probably not a rare undervalued masterpiece that needs to be lovingly restored to appreciate its true worth. But the current joyful production by Encores! is as welcome as a cup of hot chocolate laced with whipped cream during these snowy, icy, sleety, bitterly cold days and dreary nights that have been the hallmark of this winter in New York. 

Little Me is a laugh-filled show with TV sketch comedy roots (Simon famously launched his career writing skits for Sid Caesar, who starred in the original Broadway production) and a tuneful score, with music by Coleman and lyrics by Leigh. 

The story unfolds through the frame of depicting the writing of the memoirs of the fictional stage, screen, and television star Belle Poitrine, as told to “Patrick Dennis,” the pen name of the author of the book on which the musical is based (as well as the author of the more highly successful Auntie Mame).   

But even though Belle’s life story provides the shape for the show, the musical rises or falls on the strength of the male lead, who portrays 7 different men in Belle’s life, most of whom die before the end. 

With the Encores! production, we are most fortunate in that the shoulders on whom this task falls belong to Christian Borle, who has a keen and mischievous sense of comic timing reminiscent of Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin (this was even truer of Borle’s performance as Black Stache in Peter and the Starcatcher). 

Borle runs on and off the stage, going through quick costume and personality changes throughout the entire show. (This includes the requisite gag where he has to “ad lib” a cover-up for an incomplete change in appearance). The best of these characterizations is that of Fred Poitrine, the terribly nearsighted and socially inept World War I doughboy, who endearingly sings “Real Live Girl” to Belle, and marries her just in time to legitimize the ensuing birth of her daughter before he marches off to his untimely death by paper cut. 

As good as Borle is, this is far from a one-person show, which boasts wonderful performances from the entire cast, including Rachel York as the young Belle; the marvelous Judy Kaye as the older Belle; Tony Yazbeck as George, the boy-next-door turned hotshot nightclub owner (he delivers a terrific “I’ve Got Your Number”); Harriet Harris as the snobbish mother of Noble, Belle’s one true love; and Lee Wilkof and Lewis J. Stadlen as Belle’s agents, the Buchsbaum brothers. Stadlen, who most recently appeared with Nathan Lane in The Nance, is another theatrical stalwart who took the world by storm when he gloriously pulled off the multiple-roles acting feat by playing five characters in the acclaimed 1974 revival of Candide.   

This production also boasts outstanding work by the singers and dancers of the chorus.  And might I add, the choreography by Joshua Bergasse is so creative it is a wonder to me he has not become a major Broadway fixture. 

With Little Me, Encores! is entering its 21^st year of producing short-term revivals of Broadway musicals, and it almost seems to top itself year after year.  Minimalist set designs have become increasingly clever (the sinking of The Gigantic in Little Me could give Titanic: The Musical a run for its money at the concert production at Avery Fisher Hall later this month), and the eschewing of script-in-hand performances by the cast is becoming more and more de rigueur. 

A shout-out to director John Rando and music director Rob Berman, as well as to everyone involved with this production.  They should all join Belle in raising a glass and singing:  Here’s to us, my darling my dear/Here’s to us tonight!

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‘King Lear’: The Play’s The Thing to Celebrate With the Splendid Frank Langella in the Lead

Frank Langella as King Lear

When you think about it, the title really does say it all.

Shakespeare called his play King Lear—not The Former King Lear, or King Lear, Retired.  And therein lies the key to understanding the declawed lion who at turns is regal, miserable, nasty, confused, and pitiable. 

We all know the outline of the plot: an elderly king abdicates, intending to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, presumably to insure the peaceful transfer of power to the next generation.  But, of course, from the moment he moves to bring this about, problems arise, brought on by his failure to understand the personal and political ramifications of his actions.  

King Lear is a very complex play, with multiple characters who are complex in their own right.  In addition there is a varying shift of tone that can be confusing.  Parts of the play read as very Elizabethan, while others take on the blood-lust-and-greed qualities of Jacobean drama.  As an aside, I’ll mention that such a duality also is evident in Timon of Athens, written at approximately the same time and about which it has been speculated that Shakespeare shared the writing credits with Thomas Middleton, a master of Jacobean gore. 

Whether King Lear is the work of Shakespeare alone or the result of a collaboration, I’ll leave to the scholars to fight over. Regardless, I will say that reading the play can certainly be a challenge, not only with the conflicting styles but also with the inclusion of characters who have similar-sounding names (Edgar and Edmund), or who shift into different roles that come and go (Edgar and “Poor Tom”), or who are pretty much interchangeable (Goneril and Regan).  And, for that matter, do we really need both the noble Kent and the noble Gloucester to make the point? 

Thankfully, with a good production such as the one now on view at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, King Lear is much easier to comprehend (though I’ll confess I’m still not having much luck differentiating Goneril from Regan).  A strong cast, with several standouts, along with sharp directing by Angus Jackson, help keep the audience glued to the action for the three-hour running time. 

But, of course, everything hangs on the actor in the title role.  And what a thrill it is to watch Frank Langella, at the age of 76, as he wrestles with and ultimately conquers the highly demanding and exhausting portrayal of this great mythic personality. 

There are many ways to interpret the role of King Lear.  Here Mr. Langella gives us a Lear who has known nothing but deference to his every whim for most of his life, like some protected pop star surrounded always by his fawning entourage.

That he expects to maintain his regal lifestyle after giving up the throne makes perfect sense. That he fails to understand his daughters also makes perfect sense as well, for who would expect an all-powerful king to have been closely involved in the lives of his offspring?  It follows, as well, that whatever obeisance they may owe him, expecting filial love from any of his daughters (including, yes, Cordelia) is to seek what is not possible.

Thus Regan (Lauren O'Neil) and Goneril (Catherine McCormack) proffer false and formalized words of love at Lear’s behest in order to get what they want. Their younger sister, Cordelia (Isabella Laughland), either out of honesty or naiveté, is more straightforward in the speech that sets off Lear’s downward spiral:  “I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less.”

The explosion triggered by Cordelia’s words marks the beginning of the end, as Lear disinherits her on the spot and ties his anticipated retirement years to the mercies of the other two—a foolish misjudgment that, coupled with a deepening mental fog associated with senility, lead to his utter and complete descent into the nothingness that only mere mortals would recognize as the closing arc of life.

Wondrous it is to watch Langella as he shapes the rise and fall of Lear’s descent through anger, hurt, sadness, despair, unbridled rage, and, eventually, periods of gentleness, understanding, and acceptance until the very end. 

Through his journey, he is aided by his fellow actors, especially Denis Conway (marvelous as Gloucester) and by Steven Pacey as Kent, both of whom have a terrific grasp of their roles and of performing Shakespeare.  Harry Melling as the Fool, and Sebastian Armesto in the dual role of Edgar/Poor Tom are both very good as well.  And while I could live without the onstage rainstorm (a bit of technological magic that seems overindulgent), the production itself is well-conceived and generally unfussy.

Whether you are a connoisseur of King Lear or you have yet to see a production, this is certainly a good one to attend, if only for the first-class performance by Mr. Langella. 

On the other hand, you might want to wait out the cold of winter to see what the Theater for a New Audience has in store at its new home right around the corner from the Harvey.  Its version of King Lear, starring Michael Pennington, begins March 14 and runs to May 4.

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