When he’s told that the State Department wants him to tour the world representing the United States of America, Louis Armstrong and his fourth wife Lucille both laugh in disbelief.
“Louis cusses like a sailor, hangs out with gangsters, looks at porn magazines, and smokes pot all day,” Lucille says.
That, of course, is not how Americans remember Louis Armstrong – and it is not the main impression we get of him in “A Wonderful World.” James Monroe Iglehart, the Broadway veteran who won a Tony as the genial genie in “Aladdin,” largely portrays the jazz trumpeter and gravel-voiced singer as the familiar fun-loving figure who for decades was one of America’s most popular entertainers. But, yes, “A Wonderful World” does try to tell a fuller story, most effectively in the ways he had to navigate the overt and subtle racism of his times, from condescension in Hollywood to police harassment in Memphis to lethal violence on the Mississippi.
That Armstrong was deeper and darker than his public persona is not a new revelation: The same point was made vividly by John Douglas Thompson portraying him in the 2014 play “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” by Terry Teachout, who had earlier written an Armstrong biography.
But “A Wonderful World” is a jukebox musical, whose self-evident primary purpose is Broadway entertainment, not nuanced portraiture. The effort to do both does no particular favor to either.
There are certainly moments of energetic tap dancing, gorgeous singing, and brassy playing; the distinguished jazz musician and composer Branford Marsalis is the show’s music arranger and orchestrator, the first time he’s doing such work for a Broadway show. Iglehart pulls off an impersonation that’s most impressive for its fidelity to Armstrong’s astonishing range of sounds. The thirty songs in the show range from the blues in the 1920s through jazz and swing and scat to “Hello, Dolly” In 1964, the number one hit that knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts – all aided immeasurably by the musicians who actually play the instruments he and the other actors pretend to play (The unseen trumpet players are Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris)
In its effort to make their show both a serious portrait and a Broadway entertainment, the creative team seems to have taken to heart a line they give Armstrong to say a few times: “Jazz is about the choices we make in between the notes.” But the choices they make beyond the music don’t always work. “A Wonderful World” winds up musically comforting but narratively annoying. At times, the nostalgia for the jazz music, some of it a century old, was weighed down by a retrograde sensibility even older.
In a prologue, Armstrong is near the end of his life, rehearsing a homecoming concert with a piano player, during which he explains the four chapters of his life. These turn out to be the four chapters that unfold over the course of the musical.
The chapters are set in chronological order in each of the four cities where he lived and worked – and each is dominated by one of his four wives, who each call him by a different name.
He is Louis to Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins), who was a knife-wielding prostitute he met in his hometown of New Orleans, with its “hot gritty soul,” where he was first turned on to music by the music teacher in the reformatory school to which he had been sent.
He is Pops to Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming) the classically trained pianist who became his mentor and his manager as well as wife after he moved to Chicago, with its “sharp steel sound,” and joined King Joe Oliver’s band, where his instrument of choice switched from cornet to trumpet.
He is Satchmo to Alpha Smith (Kim Exum) in Hollywood, with its “showmanship and energy,” where he starred in dozens of films.
He is Louie to Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy) , a dancer at the Cotton Club, when he moved to New York, with its “steady tempo and backbone” and finally settled down, moving into a house in Corona, Queens (where his home is now a museum.)
If this is a bit too pat, there is some pleasure in its patness. The inclusion of his wives is also, I suppose, justifiable. Lil Hardin in particular seems to have been influential in his development as a musician. Focusing on his relationships also helps to fit in both some of the lively love songs and sad break-up songs that were in the Armstrong repertoire. The problem I have with this focus is one of proportion. They have turned Armstrong’s apparent womanizing into the organizing principle of both his life and this musical. He and the other male musicians show a locker room sensibility. The bandleader King Joe Oliver tells him “you need to be single because men like us need to travel and tour. And when you’re on tour you can…explore.” Armstrong describes women in New Orleans as if they’re a species onto themselves, with a crude humor we’re clearly meant to enjoy: “they’ll poison your tea, stab you in the back, and steal a lock of hair to put a voodoo hex on you…but they’re ladies about it.” There’s even something of a catfight between his first and second wives (which they no doubt included so that the two could duet on a mash-up of “Some of These Days” and “After You’ve Gone.”)
At the same time, they ignore what was surely the most interesting partnership he had with a woman, at least musically speaking – Ella Fitzgerald. Her only presence in “A Wonderful World” is when Armstrong’s agent Joe Glaser is on the phone with a concert producer demanding they give his client more money than they give her.
Early on in “A Wonderful World,” Armstrong is performing on a Riverboat, when a bandmate plays a new popular song on a record player. Although they don’t have the sheet music, Armstrong spontaneously figures it out for the band, arranging it for each instrumentalist. It’s mostly a throwaway moment, meant to demonstrate the man’s musical genius. There could be many more.
A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical
Studio 54
Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes including one intermission
Tickets: $69 – $308. Digital and General Rush: $49
Book by Aurin Squire; Conceived by Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw; Music arranged and orchestrated by Branford Marsalis;; Vocal arrangements by Daryl Wate
Directed by Christopher Renshaw; Co-Directed by Christina Sajous and James Monroe Iglehart; Choreography and Musical Staging by Rickey Tripp; Tap Choreography by Dewitt Fleming, Jr.
Scenic Design by Adam Koch and Stephen Royal; Costume Design by Toni-Leslie James; Lighting Design by Cory Pattak; Sound Design by Kai Harada; Video Design by Adam Koch and Stephen Royal; Hair and Wig Design by Matthew Armentrout and Ashley Digiovanni; Make-Up Design by Kali Taylor
Cast: James Monroe Iglehart as Louis Armstrong. Darlesia Cearcy as Lucille Wilson, Jennie Harney-Fleming as Lil Hardin, Kim Exum as Alpha Smith and Dionne Figgins as Daisy Parker.
DeWitt Fleming Jr. as Lincoln Perry; Jason Thomas Forbach as Crooner & Others; Gavin Gregory as King Joe Oliver; and Jimmy Smagula as Joe Glaser.
Brandon Louis Armstrong, Wesley J. Barnes, Willie Clyde Beaton II, Ronnie S. Bowman, Jr., Eean S. Cochran, Kate Louissaint, Matt Magnusson, Jodeci Milhouse, Alysha Morgan, Khadijah Rolle, Tally Sessions, Brett Sturgis, Renell Taylor, Meridien Terrell, and Dori Waymer.
James T. Lane as Louis Armstrong at certain performances
