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 life. “But what makes this whole thing wonderful is the love you bring with you.” The good and bad aspects of Armstrong’s character are held together by Iglehart’s radiant lovability.
A Wonderful World | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel
Principal among the show’s assets, aptly, is the music. Some 30 songs are featured in whole or in part, including such Armstrong standards as “Basin Street Blues,” “Heebie Jeebies,” “St. James Infirmary” and “Hello, Dolly”; arranged and orchestrated by former Tonight Show bandleader Branford Marsalis, with an assist from Daryl Waters, they are played by a swinging not-quite-big band that notably includes Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris on trumpet. (Kai Harada’s sound design does an excellent job of making voices and instruments seem to emerge from the right places.) The exuberance of the playing is often matched in dance, choreographed by Rickey Tripp and executed by a large and capable ensemble. Although three directors are credited—Christopher Renshaw, who conceived the show with the late Andrew Delaplaine, plus Christina Sajous and Iglehart himself—there is no sign of too many cooks at work; the show unfolds smoothly.
A Wonderful World spans more than six decades of 20th-century history, so there’s only so detailed it can get. In Aurin Squire’s script, Armstrong’s life is drawn in quick strokes and cleverly quartered for clarity: He assigns each of the play’s four parts its own wife and city. “Music and love work together like a couple,” says Armstrong, and he is highly familiar with coupling. In his hometown of New Orleans, a young Louis marries Daisy (Dionne Figgins), a good-time gal who is quick to draw a knife. After moving to Chicago to play with King Joe Oliver (Gavin Gregory), he takes up with a sophisticated jazz pianist, Lil (a very impressive Jennie Harney-Fleming); when he leaves her to go to Los Angeles, he is flanked by the luscious Alpha (Kim Exum). Finally, in the 1940s, he settles in New York City with Lucille (Darlesia Cearcy), a strong-willed and mighty-voiced Cotton Club performer who lays down the law. Like Adam Koch and Stephen Royal’s set, whose decorative drops elegantly suggest changes of location and time, Squire guides us through Armstrong’s peripatetic love life with economy, and all four women deliver strongly. (One does wish that the musical didn’t include a framing device of narration by an older Armstrong, a trope that has quickly become a cliché.)
A Wonderful World | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel
Throughout the show, Squire also weaves in another thread: a historical overview of race in America and how Armstrong’s career was shaped by it. As a young man, Amstrong witnesses a lynching, which he reflects on in a sorrowful rendition of “Black and Blue”; later, he faces backlash for criticizing Dwight D. Eisenhower’s handling of desegregation—he sings a slashing mockery of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—as well as criticism from within the Black community for his clowning persona. In A Wonderful World’s sharpest sequence, Armstrong meets Lincoln Perry (DeWitt Fleming Jr.), the Black actor who earned a mint by playing the lazy, shuffling stereotype Stepin Fetchit. They discuss the obsequious public roles they play in public and share a pointed duet of “When You’re Smiling” (with Fleming acing his own tap choreography); the cheers that greet their calculated performance of cheerfulness evoke a shiver of discomfort.
For the most part, however, A Wonderful World doesn’t aim for such irony. While it isn’t a hagiography, the show is certainly a celebration, and although it touches on some of Armstrong’s faults (including his serial infidelity) it doesn’t dwell on them. The result is a musical that, for all the information it provides, winds up offering a rather vague portrait of its subject—especially as compared to the women in his life, who are rendered more distinctly. But as a survey of a great American artist, and a life lived to the hilt, it delivers what it promises: a solid meal of a show, with classic fare to please fans both new and old.
A Wonderful World. Studio 54 (Broadway). Book by Aurin Squire. Directed by Christopher Renshaw. Co-directed by Christina Sajous and James Monroe Iglehart. With James Monroe Iglehart, Darlesia Cearcy, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Dionne Figgins, Kim Exum, Gavin Gregory, DeWitt Fleming Jr., Jimmy Smagula, Renell Taylor, Jason Forbach. Running time: 2hrs 35mins. One intermission.
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A Wonderful World | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel
