Studio 54

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Cue the fanfare! The king has arrived on Broadway, and there will be trumpets—especially since the man in question is Louis Armstrong, the musical icon sometimes known as the King of Jazz. ”I don’t even like that title,” he demurs. “That’s just something my manager came up with.” Luckily, he has plenty of other monikers to go by: Louis, Louie, Satchmo, Pops. At the start of the new biomusical A Wonderful World, each of Armstrong’s four wives calls him by a different name, as though to suggest the interior multitudes of a performer who, in public, always wore a famously broad smile—partly as an invitation to joy but partly as a mask of comedy. The musical offers a pleasing depiction of that joy and that mask, if not of those multitudes. The outstanding James Monroe Iglehart, who plays Armstrong, has that smile down: a grin so wide and bright that, when the lights go out, you half expect it to linger behind like the Cheshire Cat’s. Iglehart has mastered Armstong’s mannerisms, too, and the churning gravel of Armstrong’s unmistakable voice (to an extent that makes you fear for his long-term vocal health); in Toni-Leslie James’s snazzy costumes and a series of first-class wigs, he summons Armstrong to life like the Genie he once played in Aladdin. But the performance goes beyond expert impersonation. Whether Armstrong is on stage or off, Iglehart infuses him with bluff, buoyant charm. “There’s been some good and some bad,” says Armstrong of his...