Fantasia Barrino in After Midnight at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York
After Midnight continues at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York, for an open-ended run.
To borrow from E.Y. (Yip) Harburg’s memorable lyric, it seems like happiness is just a thing called After Midnight. This revue of music from the heyday in the late 1920s of the Cotton Club, the fabled Harlem night-spot, is escapist Broadway entertainment at its very best. It features on stage 17 great musicians handpicked by Wynton Marsalis, the esteemed artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center series, backing up an array of 30 or so absolutely glorious dancers and singers.
Duke Ellington was the band leader at the Cotton Club during some of its glory years, and the show headlines much of his music – orchestral pieces, songs and/or arrangements – including such classics as ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’ and ‘Creole Love Call’. There are also standards from such songwriting teams as Ted Koehler/Harold Arlen and Dorothy Fields/Jimmy McHugh, who contributed to the club’s repertoire.
The show itself dates back to 2011. Conceived by Jack Viertel, artistic director of the Encores! series at New York’s City Center, it was presented as a joint special offering of Encores! and Jazz at Lincoln Center. The audience response called for another brief run in 2012. Back then, the show carried the title Cotton Club Parade. Refigured now for Broadway, the Cotton Club has been expunged from the title – something to do with licensing issues – but the show’s infectious rhythms and scintillating glamour continue intact, even moreso, under the inspired creativity of director and choreographer Warren Carlyle.
The costumes, now created by fashion designer Isabel Toledo, have been lifted to dazzling dimensions, from retro tap dance dresses to feather-bedecked showgirl glitz. The set and lighting, by John Lee Beatty and Howell Binkley, respectively, exude art deco-cum-jazz age pizzazz. Most notably, a guest artist slot has been added to the cast. It’s filled for the opening by Fantasia, an American Idol winner on television, now using a last name as well, Barrino. Fantasia made an auspicious Broadway debut as a replacement in The Color Purple, and she can only add to her accolades with her work here. An irresistible combination of sultriness, humour and Kewpie Doll looks, she doles out roof-raising renditions of such numbers as ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’ and ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’.
Fantasia, scheduled to be in the show until early February, is, however, only the rich frosting on the roster of overflowing talent. Dulé Hill, widely known for his work in the television drama The West Wing, gets to show off his ingratiating tap dancing and singing skills, as well as serving as a sort of host for the evening. As the host, he delivers snippets of mood-setting poetry from Langston Hughes, whose work celebrated the era known as the Harlem Renaissance. Adriane Lenox, with the show since its first City Center outing, tears up the stage as a blues shouter with a uninhibited flair for raunchy comedy, cautioning ladies in the audience: “Women be wise, keep your mouth shut, don’t advertise your man.”
In other moods, dancer Karine Plantadit practically flies over the stage in an interpretation of Ellington’s ‘Black and Tan Fantasy,’ while a duo of Julius ‘iGlide’ Chisolm and Virgil ‘Lil’O’ Gadson provide a virtual tutorial in contrasting dance styles: snakelike control and unrestrained acrobatic. The seductive appeal of the swinging girl trios of the past is re-created in the buoyant harmonising of Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M Hill Jackson and Bryonha Marie Parham. Then capping all, there are the breathtaking synchronised tap numbers and the big ensemble numbers that threaten to pound the floor into joyful smithereens.
There is, to be sure, no mention of the dark sides of the Cotton Club and its era – the mob infiltration, the racist admission policy. But that would make another show. Early on in After Midnight, two deliciously gleeful fellows, Daniel J Watts and Phillip Attmore, sing and dance their way through Koehler and Arlen’s ‘Happy As the Day Is Long’, and the mood is set for the entire show. Even when Fantasia laments about ‘Stormy Weather’, you revel happily in enjoying the glorious way she portrays her misery.
Ron Cohen
Other recent Broadway reviews include:
The Landing – Vineyard Theatre, New York
Fun Home – The Public Theater, New York
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.