[Dixielandjazz] "After Midnight" Review - NY Times

[Robert Ringwald]

Time Travel and Time Steps: Tapping Into Harlem History
by Charles Isherwood
New York Times, November 4, 2013
The band takes the last bow in "After Midnight," the sparkling new jazz revue that
opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on Sunday night. This may be unusual for Broadway,
where the players are normally in the pit -- and the music often sounds as if it
could have been piped in from Hong Kong -- but it's entirely as it should be.
I mean no disrespect to the superabundance of talented performers in this jubilant
show when I say that they are all playing second fiddle, if you will, to the main
attraction. This would be the 16 musicians called the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars,
stacked in a bandstand at the back of the stage for much of the evening, rollicking
through the music of Duke Ellington and Harold Arlen and others with a verve that
almost captivates the eye as much as it does the ear. It will be a long time before
Broadway hosts music making this hot, sweet and altogether glorious again.
A souped-up version of a production originally presented (twice) by City Center Encores!,
"After Midnight" moves sleekly through more than 25 songs from the height of the
jazz era. Ostensibly we are time-traveling back to the heyday of the Cotton Club,
the Harlem nightclub (with a Broadway spinoff) where Ellington was the bandleader
for a heady spell, and where many of the black jazz greats of the 1920s and 1930s
performed, before whites-only audiences, alas.
For the Broadway run, the producers have added a couple of name performers, the "American
Idol" winner Fantasia Barrino and the singer-dancer-actor Dule Hill (currently of
the television series "Psych"). Ms. Barrino will be performing only through Feb.
9, at which point a rotating roster of guest performers takes over. This model may
sound like the latest in Broadway-producing cynicism, but it has historical bona
fides: The original Cotton Club hosted "celebrity nights" when guest performers would
take the stage. (K. D. Lang is next up, and she's followed by the R&B names Toni
Braxton and Kenny Edmonds, known as Babyface.)
Mr. Hill and Ms. Barrino are agreeable headliners, but they share the stage with
an array of equally gifted performers, most notably the delectable Adriane Lenox,
but also a half-dozen great dancers (of the tap, street and pseudo-balletic varieties),
performing choreography (of the terrific and the not-so-terrific varieties) by Warren
Carlyle, who also directs.
"After Midnight" does not make much of an attempt to impart any of the Cotton Club
history. As the evening's nominal host, Mr. Hill sprinkles the evening with a few
snippets of Langston Hughes's poetry, but it's incidental. Instead the focus remains
squarely on music and its interpretation, by those amazing musicians, under the snappy
baton of the conductor Daryl Waters, and the performers who sing, slide, scat, cartwheel
and generally raise a ruckus in front of them.
A review of a revue tends to resemble a laundry list, so here come highlights of
the washing, in no particular order. Of her four solo spots Ms. Barrino shines brightest
performing the standard "I Can't Give You Anything but Love," her tangy voice embracing
the Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh classic with obvious affection. She's also delightful
when flirting with a quartet of catcalling guys in the lesser-known "Zaz Zuh Zaz"
(by Cab Calloway and Harry White), creditably playing a vampy chanteuse with a naughty
smile. (Her mouth seems to hold twice as many teeth as everybody else's.) Although
I admired Ms. Barrino's heartfelt performance in "The Color Purple," I was surprised
at how smoothly and intuitively she slid into the vocal persona of a jazz singer.
Ellington's lyric-free but gorgeous "Creole Love Call" is delivered by Carmen Ruby
Floyd with a hypnotic simplicity, her voice taking flight in tandem with the swooning
melody, which seems to glimmer visibly in the air before you. But for style, top
marks go to Ms. Lenox, who seems to bring back the authentic spirit of the era with
her sensationally funny performance of two lowdown numbers. In "Women Be Wise" (by
Sippie Wallace), she glares meaningly into the audience and admonishes her fellow
females to watch out for the man traps on the prowl. "Go Back Where You Stayed Last
Night" (by Sidney Easton and Ethel Waters) is a disdainful holler at a no-good man
knocking down a woman's door.
Dancing is rarely showcased on Broadway these days, so the abundance on view here
is a particular treat. Much of it is thrilling: Virgil Gadson is a sparkplug who
seems to spend as much time flitting across the stage on his hands -- or his back
-- as he does on his nimble feet. He's joined on the number "Hottentot" (by Fields
and McHugh) by another mesmerizing original, Julius Chisolm, a.k.a. "iGlide," who
lives up to his nickname by moving with the sinuous elegance of a human Slinky.
Tap-crazy? You'll be in seventh heaven at "After Midnight." There are several superb
tap specialists in the company -- the bright-eyed Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards has one
of the zestier solo spots -- but the most exciting is Jared Grimes, whose feet seem
to give off sparks as he alternately punishes and caresses the floor in one of the
evening's climactic numbers, Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing."
Mr. Carlyle's watery ballet choreography for the elegant Karine Plantadit ("Come
Fly Away") doesn't do full justice to this dancer's pantherlike grace, but she nevertheless
holds the stage confidently in her several solos. Blink and you'll miss the contributions
of Desmond Richardson, a noted ballet and modern dancer who flits through the show
briefly but grabs the spotlight with authority when it finds him on "The Mooche."
But it's the authority of the musicians, handpicked by the Jazz at Lincoln Center
artistic director Wynton Marsalis, that makes "After Midnight" a memorable night
at the theater. Ellington was famed for his innovations in orchestrating and arranging
music (his own and others), creating a distinctive sound that brought to jazz a symphonic
richness while maintaining an improvisatory quality that allowed each musician to
contribute to the whole.
The hallmarks of his style are recreated here beautifully. The sound of a trumpet
puts a comic accent here, a bluesy one there. The trombones wail and moan in a manner
that sounds almost human. The woodwind players are no less expressive. As played
by these remarkable talents -- space doesn't permit me to start in on another laundry
list, alas -- the music gleams, shimmers, dances and sings with an eloquence that
enthralls.
You know you are in the presence of musicians of a supremely high caliber, but the
virtuosity never feels prepackaged or mechanical. There's too much joy in the playing,
and that's the feeling audiences will be floating out of the theater on when the
last note has died out.
___________________________________
'After Midnight,' Starring Fantasia Barrino, Is Jazzy Fun on Broadway
by Joe Dziemianowicz
New York Daily News, November 4, 2013
The title "After Midnight" is all-purpose enough to leave you totally in the dark.
An Eric Clapton musical? A vampire thriller? The latest talkathon with Ethan Hawke
and Julie Delpy droning into the wee hours? No, no and no. Broadway's new arrival
is a dazzling musical revue that jets audiences back to Harlem's jazzy 1930s heyday.
It's an exhilarating joyride all the way.
If you saw "Cotton Club Parade" in 2011 or '12, that's no shocker. That production,
the first partnership between City Center and Jazz at Lincoln Center, is the basis
for "Midnight."
The leap to Broadway has brought changes: There's the new name (due to licensing
issues), gorgeous costumes by desiger Isabel Toledo, plus a rotating cadre of new
performers, including Fantasia Barrino (who headlines through Feb. 9.)
But the structure and song list remain intact. Returning director and choreographer
Warren Carlyle knows a good thing when he's staged it. Duke Ellington's music, including
"Daybreak Express" and "Creole Love Call," forms the spine.
Tasty classics by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields ("I Can't Give You Anything But
Love") and Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler ("I've Got the World on a String") add spice.
Numbers have been assembled with loving care and smarts by music director Wynton
Marsalis. In the ensemble of 25 vocalists and dancers, it's easy to pick a favorite:
It's whoever is on stage at any given moment. But the silky moves of Julius (iGlide)
Chisolm and Virgil (Lil' O) Gadson (both r.) -- alums of "So You Think You Can Dance"
-- are especially fun and memorable.
The show's not-so-secret weapon is the amazing Adriane Lenox, whose sass and brass
on "Women Be Wise" and "Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night" send the show to dizzying
heights.
"Psych" star Dule Hill shows off his tap talents and threads Langston Hughes' verse
throughout the show. The poetry adds heft and gravity to a revue that might just
float untethered. Fantasia shades her numbers with something special: baby softness
for "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," bluesy pain for "Stormy Weather" and, best
of all, a playful randiness for Cab Calloway's "Zaz Zuh Zaz."
The Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars orchestra cooks hot. Fittingly, it gets the
last showcase to send the audience out on a high note.
___________________________________
Broadway Review: 'After Midnight'
by Marilyn Stasio
Variety, November 4, 2013
When Duke Ellington and his orchestra played the Cotton Club, the swells donned their
white tie and tails and went uptown to Harlem in limousines. Everyone else took the
A train. "After Midnight," a musical revue that Jack Viertel and Warren Carlyle steered
through Encores! to this snazzy Broadway production, salutes that fabled era without
attempting to re-create it. This stylized treatment of a midnight floorshow at a
1930s jazz club is gorgeously designed to showcase roof-raising performances from
top-flight talent -- backed up by a 17-piece swing band loaded with brass and holding
down the stage.
John Lee Beatty's sophisticated set of an elegant nightclub recalls legendary hot
spots like the Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom and the Sugar Cane Club during an
era when swing was king in Harlem. Dule Hill, the amiable star of "Psych," makes
an agreeable tour guide and wisely refrains from overdoing the song-and-dance chores
better left to the pros.
Those bankable stars are toplined by Fantasia Barrino, the "American Idol" phenom
and Grammy-holding singer who earns her bread and butter here with torrid interpretations
of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," "Stormy Weather," "On the Sunny Side of
the Street," and a raunchy version of Cab Calloway's scatty "Zaz Zuh Zaz" that has
four dirty old men (well-cast company ringers) falling out of their front-row box
seats.
Costumer Isabel Toledo clearly adores Fantasia's zaftig body, at one point pouring
her into a brief, form-fitting, electric-blue number with a lampshade skirt. Toledo,
whose clothes can be found in Michelle Obama's closet, seems to love every one of
the 30-plus beautiful bodies in this company, draping them as she does in eye-catching
ensembles that fit like second skins and reflect both fashion flair and imaginative
wit. (The geometric black-and-white dresses and feathered fascinators in one number
earned audible gasps from the uptown fashionistas at one preview performance.)
The dance pants alone must have posed a design challenge, having to accommodate all
the athletic splits and leaps and somersaults that helmer Carlyle has choreographed
for the sensational dancers in the company. The tap dancers among them include traffic-stopping
talents like Jared Grimes, who performs an awesome precision routine to "It Don't
Mean a Thing," and Julius "iGlide" Chisolm and Virgil "Lil'O" Gadson, whose dancing
duel in "Hottentot" is downright dazzling. But even the novelty numbers, like Karine
Plantadit's acrobatic feats in Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy" and the synchronized
routine to "Peckin'," executed by a six-man ensemble of dancing fools in white tie
and tails, are works of art.
With more than two dozen jazz compositions on the bill -- many by Ellington, but
with composers like Harold Arlen and Jimmy McHugh well represented -- you can bet
there's a lot of singing in this show. Fantasia is clearly the star of this revue,
but Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M. Hill Jackson and Bryonha Marie Parham, who keep
showing up in funny, flirtatious incarnations of backup singers, are the show's backbone.
It falls to Adriane Lenox, though, to bring a little historical accuracy to this
idealized fantasy of Harlem in its heyday. Looking like she's been there and done
that, but was never actually convicted for it, Lenox rocks the house with two vulgar
blues solos -- "Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night" (by Sidney Easton and Ethel
Waters) and "Women Be Wise" (by Sippie Wallace, better known, perhaps, for "I'm a
Mighty Tight Woman") -- that offer a hint of gritty reality.
Sanitized though it may be, "After Midnight" is great entertainment. And by the time
the Jazz at Lincoln Center All Stars close the show with one last, glorious blast
of brass, the whole house is "Rockin' In Rhythm" and nobody wants to go home.
___________________________________
'After Midnight' Is About the Jazz, Not the History
by Chris Jones
Chicago Tribune, November 3, 2013
NEW YORK -- At the Cotton Club, the famed nighterie on the corner of 142nd Street
and Lenox Avenue, the house band between 1927 and 1931 was the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
The Duke was followed by Cab Calloway. Unbowed -- heck, ignited -- by Prohibition,
the Cotton Club featured the likes of Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole
and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson on its bills. All singing and dancing for white people
only. Officially, at least.
The Cotton Club was a complex joint -- at once a legendary showcase; an inarguably
crucial manufacturer of African-American stars; and an egregious exploiter typifying
the sins of appropriation.
"After Midnight," the new Broadway show, began as collaboration between City Center's
Encores! and Jazz at Lincoln Center, among others. The resulting show, which opened
here Sunday night under choreographer Warren Carlyle's direction, features dazzling
talent, some 30 classic numbers (mostly associated with Ellington and Calloway) from
"Zaz Zuh Zaz" to "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," and the considerable
pleasures of listening to the Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars, the real stars of
this show.
But this is, to say the least, a very loose conceptualization that could easily have
celebrated an astonishing historical moment and offered up an unabashed good time
without ignoring the racial issues in play. Those issues are so brushed aside, they
feel here like the elephant in the cupboard. Although Dule Hill, a perfectly adequate
singer and engaging presence, is on hand to proffer the Hughes narrative, and the
Cotton Club stage is evoked, it's never clear whether we're watching an official
performance or some after-hours knees-up or something more amorphous. At the end
of the show, confusion reigned when the All-Stars played after the bows. Most people
leave during the traditional Broadway playoff but this was no ordinary band and that
needed to be recognized, structurally.
The show argues that a particular fixed reality is not the point -- the music is
the music, the talent is the talent, the tradition is a great tradition that deserves
preservation. To a point, that's all true. But context still is important. What these
performers did at the official show was not the same as what they did for each other.
At the Cotton Club, the line between pure self-expression and the expectations of
the venue and its audience was shifting and complicated. But you know it was on the
mind of every dancer, singer and musician who sang their for their supper and who,
as they looked out on that sea of white faces, must surely have wondered whether
they were part of the greatest and most liberated show on Earth or a giant act of
pretending for the man.
You have the sense that the show, which currently stars the red-hot Fantasia, did
not want to be seen as a historic re-creation, and indeed, the traps there are self-evident.
For many of us, hearing the fabulous Adriane Lenox belting out "Go Back Where You
Stayed Last Night" is better than any clever Broadway conceit. And the notion of
fusing old school and new school certainly has an effect of enlivening the former
and rooting the latter.
Still, that does not alleviate the nagging sense here that this could have been a
good deal more, had Carlyle led his cast down some of the riskier roads, which may
mostly have meant letting us see a little of the air between the venue and its loyal
artists, leaders of a great entertainment empire who could not even invite their
colleagues to come and see their show.
Karen Akers Treats Audience to a Porter Party
by Jay Handelman
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, November 3, 2013
In the opening number of her cabaret show "Akers Sings Porter: ‘Anything Goes',"
singer Karen Akers croons that she feels like a million dollars and "I'm Throwing
a Ball Tonight."
The evening presented by Artist Series Concerts at the Historic Asolo Theater is
actually a little more humble than a formal ball. But she certainly makes audience
members feel like they're being treated to a swank party in her living room, where
she and pianist/musical director Don Rebic just happen to be ready to entertain with
an assortment of nearly two dozen playful songs that emphasize the cleverness and
panache of Cole Porter's lyrics.
Akers, who may be best known to some as the cabaret singer in Woody Allen's "The
Purple Rose of Cairo" or from her Broadway roles in "Nine" or "Grand Hotel," spends
most of her time performing cabaret and concert programs. Her vocal range may have
thinned or narrowed a bit over the years, but she still sings with smarts and a reedy
power that suits her ingratiating demeanor.
Though there are many familiar tunes, she doesn't resort to a program of Porter's
greatest hits, mixing things up with less well-known numbers like that opening song
or the cute "Supermarket in Old Peking," " Thank You So Much, Mrs. Lowsborough-Goodby,"
"The Tale of the Oyster" and "Where Have You Been."
But she brings new thoughts or insights to even the best known songs. "Don't Fence
Me In," for example isn't just a cowboy song, she says. "Now it means don't hobble
me with regrets," and even though Rebic plays it with the clip-clop bounce of a trotting
horse, you begin to hear the song anew.
Between songs (and sometimes during) she offers little tidbits about Porter and his
work, which also adds to the feelings we get from each number. When she quotes Porter
saying that "I'm spending my life escaping boredom, not because I'm bored, but because
I don't want to be," you might hear the spirited lyrics to "Anything Goes" in a different
manner.
The bulk of the concert featured Porter at his list-making cleverest, from "Let's
Do It" ("birds do it, bees do it") to "Can-Can," or "The Physician," about a woman
who is in love with a doctor who praises everything about her anatomy but "he never
said he loved me," she laments. "He said my bronchial tubes were entrancing, My epiglottis
filled him with glee. He simply loved my larynx and went wild about my pharynx,"
the patient/lover sings at one point.
At Saturday's first performance Akers occasionally got confused about which line
came next, but she played it off (with Rebic's help) with a slight chuckle, making
the audience further appreciate her.
There was a delightful combination of "Buddy Beware" and "Always True to You in My
Fashion," about women with unorthodox views of relationships. And as befits a man
who spent long stretches living in France, Akers included a trio of songs about Porter's
love for Paris.
Of course, there were such timeless classics as "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Begin
the Beguine" and "It's All Right With Me," which reveal Porter's depths for melody
and style, and Aker's own skill at playing with them.
-30


-Bob Ringwald K6YBV
www.ringwald.com
916/ 806-9551

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