Theater review by Alex Huntsberger
At the start of Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, Summer (Dan’Yelle Williamson) welcomes audience members to sing along and even to dance in the aisles if they want. It’s a telling moment. This is a show for the singer’s superfans—the ones who know her catalogue by heart, well beyond such megahits as “Hot Stuff,” “Love to Love You” and “She Works Hard for The Money.” For more casual admirers, it has much less to offer. Maybe we should stop referring to shows like this as jukebox musicals and start calling them karaoke musicals instead. They’re only fun if you know all the words.
Like a store-brand version of The Cher Show, to which it bears a striking resemblance, Summer uses a trio of actresses to portray its subject, who died in 2012. Williamson is Diva Donna, the oldest and wisest of the three; Olivia Elease Hardy plays the precocious young Duckling Donna, and Alex Hairston handles Disco Donna, the singer at the height of her powers and success. Together, they track Summer’s rise from the aspiring star—in the Munich recording studio of Italian synth god Giorgio Moroder (Kyli Rae)—to dance-music queen to pill-addicted burnout to born-again Christian. Co-written by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary and director Des McAnuff, the script offers few insights about Summer’s experience beyond the most basic platitudes. (Sure, she might have sung “I Feel Love”…but did she really feel love?)
The show’s lightness serves its goofier impulses better than its serious ones. The dancing lawyers that accompany Summer’s lawsuit against her former record company are a delight; the scene where her German ex-boyfriend beats her in time to the beat of the score is not. Robert Falls brilliantly employed “Last Dance” in his 2013 staging of Measure for Measure; Summer simply uses the song as its finale, like a reward for having made it through the night. But while the production’s all-around blandness is disappointing, it’s Sergio Trujillo’s run-of-the-mill choreography that truly underwhelms. If there’s one thing the Queen of Disco’s story demands, it’s dancing worthy of the subject.
James M. Nederlander Theatre. Music and lyrics by various writers. Book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary and Des McAnuff. Directed by McAnuff. With Alex Hairston, Dan’Yelle Williamson, Olivia Elease Hardy. Running time: 100 minutes. No intermission.