Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life at New World Stages, New York. Picture: Carol Rosegg
Maurice Hines Tappin’ Thru Life continues at New World Stages, New York until 13 March.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
At age 72, Maurice Hines radiates an impeccable showmanship that makes his Off-Broadway autobiographical show, entitled (excuse the reduncancy) Maurice Hines Tappin’ Thru Life, a non-stop pleasure.
Directed with comparable style by Jeff Calhoun, the production offers generous helpings of Hines’ skilled, nimble dancing, expressive jazz singing and his warm and ingratiating personality, as he skips blithely over his life and his career. He tells the audience how he and his younger brother, Gregory – guided by their loving, perspicacious mother – began as a dancing duo on a local TV show in New York spotlighting kiddie talent, how they then moved on to national TV, Las Vegas, Broadway and Hollywood. As their act evolved, they ramped up the comedy and singing, and for several years their father, a drummer, joined them; the trio was known as Hines, Hines and Dad.
The narrative, written by Hines, stays pretty much on the surface. When he notes that he and brother Gregory didn’t talk to one another for ten years, he doesn’t really explain why, except to allow that they started “to fight a lot”.
Nevertheless, the show has a goodly share of emotional moments. Hines tells how on their first time in Las Vegas, the young brothers, as African-Americans, were subjected to racism by being barred at certain hotels. He concludes the story by singing a moving rendition of the song ‘Smile’ (“Smile though your heart is aching”), while photos of signs from the past indicating racial segregation – ‘colored served in the rear’ – are projected onto the set.
When he says how he loved dancing with his brother (Gregory Hines died of cancer in 2003), he demonstrates this by doing a soft shoe they did as kids, while an empty spotlight portrays Gregory. And the love that Hines feels for his parents is palpable whenever he gazes at their blown-up photos projected onto the set.
Then, too, there is the love that Hines feels for performing, and it sends a sizzling electric current throughout the whole artfully crafted proceedings. Along with dancing, Hines delivers captivating renditions of a flock of standards, worked into his tale: ‘Too Marvelous for Words’, ‘Ballin’ the Jack’, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, ‘Luck Be a Lady’, and many others.
Hines is accompanied by an onstage, nine-piece all-female band, The Diva Jazz Orchestra, led by drummer Sherrie Maricle. The driving arrangements allow several in the band to take the spotlight with spectacular solos.
As if to demonstrate the continuing legacy of tap that performers such as Hines and his brother helped build, the show also features a pair of tap-dancing siblings in their twenties, John and Leo Manzari. Their extended duo near the close of the show is breathtaking, only to be topped when Hines brings on a still younger dancer to join them. This slot is filled by an alternating line-up of children that Hines and Calhoun have found in the various cities where Tappin’ Thru Life has toured over the past year. At the performance reviewed, the dancing tyke was 12-year-old Luke Spring, whose unforced youthful verve and vintage-looking expertise were jaw-dropping.
The show is also marked by an avalanche of name-dropping, as Hines cites the many high-voltage stars and celebrities he either worked with or became acquainted with over the years. They range from Jack Benny and Tallulah Bankhead to Lena Horne, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. But it’s all done with such affection and awe that it never becomes odious. The names simply contribute nicely to this opportunity offered audiences to revel in the glory of old-school showbiz at its best.
Ron Cohen
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