‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: Alison Luff, Olive Ross-Kline & Adam Jacobs. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

THE WHO’S TOMMY
Music & lyrics by Pete Townshend
Book by Pete Townshend & Des McAnuff
Choreography by Lorin Latarro
Directed by Des McAnuff
Nederlander Theatre
208 W 41st St
https://tommythemusical.com/

By Scott Harrah

Loosely based on the 1969 concept album, the 1993 Broadway adaptation of The Who’s Tommy by Pete Townshend and director Des McAnuff was a smash hit in New York, London and Toronto. This revival 31 years later arrives with great expectations and pedigree but leaves us with more questions than anything else.

Case in point: Why is the overture set in “The Future,” with cast members sporting dark masks as if in some demented 1980s music video? For those unfamiliar with the story, The Who’s Tommy is about a “deaf, dumb and blind kid” who experiences a series of traumas, but the family dysfunction starts long before the poor boy is even born. The story then opens in London in 1940 with the marriage of his parents, the Walkers. Next, we see Tommy’s future father Captain Walker (Adam Jacobs) parachuting into Nazi Germany where he is captured as a prisoner of war. Across the North Sea in England, the captain’s brother Ernie (John Ambrosino) delivers a package to pregnant Mrs. Walker (Alison Luff). Military officers arrive to announce that her husband has disappeared and has most likely been killed by the Germans.

In the following scene, nurses hand Mrs. Walker newborn son Tommy. Soon it’s 1945 and the Allies have freed Captain Walker and the other POWs. The war might be over, but the family fireworks are just beginning. Mrs. Walker is celebrating her 21^st birthday with her newfound boyfriend and four-year-old Tommy. When Captain Walker finally comes home to his estranged wife and sees what’s happening, Tommy witnesses a violent act that will traumatize him for many years.

This is a convoluted story indeed, but since Tommy is a musical based on the quintessential “rock opera,” one should be able to overlook the scattershot narrative and just enjoy the famous score, right? Unfortunately, this production is full of dark lighting, murky imagery and muffled sound, so hearing song lyrics in garbled tones is frustrating for audiences. Is it the microphones? Whatever the case, director Des McAnuff chose to showcase gimmicky projections, a “high tech” set and Lorin Latarro’s uninspired choreography more than the show’s famous songbook.

One of the most iconic scenes in Tommy features the Acid Queen who is supposed to be a funky prostitute who introduces Tommy to sex and drugs. In the film, she was played with spunk and sass by the late Tina Turner. Now, on Broadway, “Acid Queen”—as performed by Christina Sajous—is dull, listless, pointless and a throwaway number.

Don’t try too hard making much sense of the rest of the musical. He endures a lot of abuse along the way from his alcoholic pedophile Uncle Ernie and his sadistic, bullying Cousin Kevin (Bobby Conte). Kevin and friends take Tommy to a local amusement arcade in England where he develops an obsession with playing pinball machines. Tommy becomes a “Pinball Wizard” (as the famous 1970s rock song points out), with much encouragement and adulation from teenage spectators. After much fanfare in the British tabloids on Fleet Street and on the BBC, Tommy is hailed as a cult figure with a legion of devoted fans. Ali Louis Bourzgui plays Tommy on one note and lacks the charisma to make him believable.

The best performances here include Alison Luff as Mrs. Walker. Ms. Luff approaches the character with the right amount of vulnerability, and her vocals always shine. The two child actors portraying Tommy (Olive Ross-Kline as four-year-old Tommy and Reese Levine as 10-year-old Tommy) are also amazingly effective, displaying all the horror and trauma the young lad experiences.

This particular revival is so excessive and confusing that it will mostly satisfy the old die-hard Who and Tommy fans.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 4, 2024
Reviewed at April 2, 2024 press performance

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: The cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: Adam Jacobs, Daniel Quadrino, Alison Luff, Olive Ross-Kline & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: Bobby Conte & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: Christina Sajous. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: (Left to right) John Ambrosino, Bobby Conte, Ali Louis Bourzgui, Alison Luff & Adam Jacobs. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

‘THE WHO’S TOMMY’: Ali Louis Bourzgui. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman.

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‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: (left to right) Ephraim Sykes, Jeremy Pope, Jawan M. Jackson, James Harkness & Derrick Baskin. Photo: Matthew Murphy

AIN’T TOO PROUD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS
Book by Dominique Morisseau
Music & lyrics from the Motown Catalog
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreographed by Sergio Trujillo
Imperial Theatre
249 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200),www.ainttooproudmusical.com

By David NouNou

Jukebox musicals are becoming more and more a Broadway staple. All you need is an extensive songbook catalog, a backstory dealing with the struggles of rising to the top, struggles with love/home life, and a few bumps along the way and the rest of the show fills itself out. You don’t need to have the songs be in the right order of their release. All you have to do is place them where they fit in best. Just look at two recent jukebox musicals: last year’s Summer: The Donna Summer Musical which was an offensive and an inaccurate mess; and The Cher Show, a campy homage to the legend.

Jukebox musicals when done well may turn out to be a profitable blockbuster. Case in point: Des McAnuff’s Jersey Boys; everything worked to perfection in that. Then there are the abysmal messes like Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville and the Go-Go’s musical Head Over Heels (both with pedestrian books). The plot lines were so absurd that the only way to go was down.

Aside from the Motown song catalog, which is the raison d’etre for Ain’t Too Proud, there is a coherent book by Dominique Morisseau, showing the struggles to the top, the struggles of being on the road and the messed-up home life, and since this is a musical about a group, the cracks that begin and form from within. Otis Williams (Derrick Baskin), the head of the Temptations who brings them together, tells us there were ultimately 24 members who made up the group over the years.

The original five consisted of Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin (Jawan M. Jackson), the bass, the silky lady’s man, Eddie Kendricks (Jeremy Pope), smooth stylist Paul Williams (Curtis Wiley) and the main voice and also the seismic volcano David Ruffin (Ephraim Sykes). The struggle here is the higher the charts they climbed, the more their demons took over and made them more volatile to work with together.

The leads, voices, acting, choreography by Sergio Trujillo, direction by Des McAnuff, songs and book are all here. This doesn’t mean that the show is flawless. This could have been one of the greatest jukebox musicals, if it wasn’t for the artistic design team: sets, costumes and lighting making the evening duller and less exciting that it actually is. The sets (what there is of them) are by Robert Brill, consisting of a monochromatic gray, black and white which visually makes the look very dreary. The costumes by Paul Tazewell are equally bland and they both make the proceedings seem like you are watching it on a 1960s black and white TV set. The lighting by Howell Binkley doesn’t shed much light on the proceedings, either.

Besides the song catalog you are left with six excellent performances and voices that give the show its gravitas and knocks you out of your seat. It is hard to single any performance but let’s start with the flashiest; Ephraim Sykes as David Ruffin is a sure-fire Tony Award contender for Featured Actor in a Musical. Jeremy Pope, seen earlier this year in Choir Boy, is just as smooth, silky and charming and another contender. At our performance the role of Paul Williams was taken over by Curtis Wiley who was splendid, as was Jawan M. Jackson (Melvin Franklin, bass), the longest-staying member of the group alongside Otis Williams. Derrick Baskin as Otis has the hardest part and it is the least showy. He is the man who brings the Temptations together. He is the father figure and the disciplinarian, thus making his role a straight man, narrator and the last living survivor of the group. The sixth is the scene-stealing Saint Aubyn, playing Dennis Edwards who replaces David Ruffin. His scenes inject attitude and humor in just the right places.

Let’s leave the ending a surprise. It brings the show to a crescendo and gives it the vibrance that leaves you in R&B nirvana.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 29, 2019
Reviewed at March 28, 2019 press performance.

‘AIN’T TOO TO PROUD’: Christian Thompson (center) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: Ephraim Sykes (center, kneeling) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: The cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: Jeremy Pope & Candice Marie Woods. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: The cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: Ephraim Sykes & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: Ephraim Sykes. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘AIN’T TOO PROUD’: Derrick Baskin (center) & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

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‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL’: (left to right) LaChanze as ‘Diva Donna,’ Ariana DeBose as ‘Disco Donna’ & Storm Lever as ‘Duckling Donna’. Photo: Joan Marcus

SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL
Songs by Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Paul Jabara & others
Book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary & DesMcAnuff
Choreography by Sergio Trujillo
Directed by Des McAnuff
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
205 West 46th Street
877-250-2929, http://thedonnasummermusical.com/

By Scott Harrah

Donna Summer was not just the Queen of Disco. Anyone who was alive in the 1970s knows she was a pop-cultural phenomenon, a powerhouse who changed pop music, brought R&B and soul to a white audience and most important of all, was an influential icon of gay-male culture before AIDS. Knowing these facts, and loving her music, makes watching this misguided “jukebox musical” about Donna Summer all the more frustrating.

Donna Summer, who died of cancer in 2012 at age 63, had such an unprecedented career full of ups and downs and a glorious songbook that has all the elements of a blockbuster musical, but sadly Summer: The Donna Summer Musical is anything but.

Blame it on the scattershot, ineffective book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary and Des McAnuff, and the choppy direction by Mr. McAnuff (who definitely could do better since he won the Tony for directing the best “jukebox” opus ever, Jersey Boys). Bruce Sudano, who was married to Ms. Summer for 32 years, reportedly gave the show’s creators rights to her life story, but he obviously had too much say in the creative control because so many of the facts have either been sanitized or glossed over.

First, everyone should know the three actresses playing Ms. Summer at various stages of her life, from young “Duckling Donna” Storm Lever to Broadway veteran Ariana DeBose as “Disco Donna” and the older “Diva Donna” LaChanze, are all excellent. Ms. Lever has an angelic voice and portrays the young Donna with incredible vulnerability. Ms. DeBose, a rising star who’s been in everything from Hamilton and Motown to A Bronx Tale, is pure sass and ebullient energy when she sings classics like “I Feel Love,” “Bad Girls” and “MacArthur Park.” Finally, LaChanze (who won the 2006 Tony for Best Actress in a Musical for The Color Purple) is often haunting as the older, wiser “Diva Donna,” especially when belting the lesser-known ballad “Friends Unknown.” All three women do justice to Ms. Summer’s vintage hits, but of course no one could ever replicate the late singer’s inimitable, multi-octave vocal range, but Ms. Lever, Ms. DeBose and LaChanze are all outstanding in their own right regardless. Especially noteworthy is Ms. DeBose and LaChanze’s rendition of “No More Tears (Enough is Enough),” the golden classic duet by Ms. Summer and Barbra Streisand. Ms. Streisand and the Queen of Disco both had the greatest female pop voices of the 1970s, and Ms. DeBose and LaChanze do a brilliant job recreating the song.

Mr. Domingo, Mr. Cary and Mr. McAnuff have patched together half-baked, episodic scenes with stilted dialogue in an attempt to weave Ms. Summer’s turbulent career and songs into a narrative. Chronologically nothing makes sense here to anyone who lived through Donna Summer’s glory days and downfall. Important figures in Ms. Summer’s career, from Italian producer Giorgio Moroder (Kaleigh Cronin) to Neil Bogart (Aaron Krohn), the record executive who helped make her a star, are written as one-dimensional cartoons. Scenes with her family back in Boston and an an abusive lover in Los Angeles are so poorly written and melodramatically executed, they seem like scenes from a bad daytime soap.

The book writers pay lip service to the decline of disco, but mostly blame Ms. Summer’s sudden drop in record sales in the early 1980s to mismanagement by her then record label, Casablanca, and there was much more to it than that if one knows about music from the era. One piece of dialogue early in the show, “For the longest time, people had me convinced there was something wrong with this music. ‘Dance music.’ Like the term was some kind of insult, “attempts to explain, perhaps, why her journey through disco stardom was so short-lived. Did the authors of the book forget about the backlash against disco? Anyone of a certain age remembers the summer of 1979 when a Chicago DJ, unhappy with so many radio stations switching to all-disco formats, destroyed disco records on air and got huge amounts of publicity. Disco was a threat to traditional rock, and appealed to a gay and black urban demographic, and Donna Summer typified the genre.

The most puzzling and downright offensive fault of Summer is its depiction, and lack thereof, regarding Donna Summer’s enormous gay male following. Gay men were the first to embrace Donna’s music, but for some head-scratching reason Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo mostly have women in drag as men in the chorus. Toward the beginning of the show, Donna says the disco scene was “A world of mystery and androgyny, blurring all the lines. It didn’t matter if you were a boy or girl or anything in between. All that mattered was that you were ready to dance.” It is a shame the creators chose to tell us this fact instead of simply showing us.

Near the show’s end, when LaChanze as Diva Donna sings “Friends Unknown,” with projections of photos of gay men dancing, that audiences even see what the world of Donna Summer was really about. She talks about the infamous “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” statement that made many gay men protest her—and her career never quite recovered from such a stupid and asinine statement as a result. It was gays who made Donna who she was, and she paid the price for offending her most devoted fans. Donna spent the rest of her life regretting it, but this fact is barely explored. Was it all simply a harmless joke she made at a concert, as depicted here?

Depicting the truth and consequences of any troubled celebrity’s backstory is the only effective way any biography, stage, film or book, should be written.

Donna Summer was a mega talent and a pioneer, paving the way for Madonna and other female recording artists. She was also a tremendously flawed and private person, and she deserves a more thoughtful, intelligent, uncensored stage adaptation of her legacy than this. Her life was “Hot Stuff” indeed, but this musical is lukewarm at best.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 26, 2018
Reviewed at April 25, 2018 press performance.

‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL”: Ariana DeBose. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL’: Storm Lever. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL’: LaChanze. Photo: Joan Marcus

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LARA & DOCTOR ZHIVAGO: Kelli Barrett & Tam Matu. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO
Book by Michael Weller
Music by Lucy Simon
Lyrics by Michael Korie & Amy Powers
Based on the novel by Joseph Pasternak
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreographed by Kelly Devine
Broadway Theatre
1681 Broadway at 53rd Street
(212-239-6200), www.DoctorZhivagoBroadway.com

By David NouNou

1957 introduced us to the epic Russian novel Doctor Zhivago. Simply put, it’s the Russian version of our Gone With the Wind. Then in 1965, David Lean gave us the epic grandiose motion picture version; both of them by today’s standards border on the tedious. Now in 2015, we have the granddaddy of them all, the musical version is the epic version of boredom and tedium. Here the definition of those two words is Doctor Zhivago.

Set against a background of war and revolution, where an eternal love is formed might sound like an ambitious and a tempting idea to some writers and composers. After all, an epic Victor Hugo novel was turned into an epic musical. What the creators here failed to realize is the book and score in that musical propelled the storyline forward and kept the action constantly moving. The book here is sophomoric and the score is about as exciting as listening to wallpaper paste dry. It turns into almost three hours of unrelenting drab tedium. Inserting the now famous song “Somewhere My Love” or “Lara’s Theme” from the movie sung by nurses on the battlefield in the middle of Act I makes the scene so absurd and ludicrous that one yearns just to hear the entire magnificent melodic Maurice Jarre score from the movie and dispense with the entire abysmally dreary repetitious songs sung here.

We have the orphaned Yuri Zhivago going to live with the Gromekos. Yuri (Tam Mutu) grows up and marries Tonia Gromeko (Lora Lee Gayer), his childhood friend, and on the eve of his wedding a revolution is going on outside. He leaves the wedding to tend the wounded and while on this mission of mercy, he meets the love of his life, Lara (Kelli Barrett). She is on her way to find Viktor Komarovsky (Tom Hewitt), who during her youth took advantage of her maidenhood and taught her the pleasures of lovemaking and she carries this guilt throughout her life. On this particular night, she is out to kill him and he is attending Yuri’s wedding party. She bursts into the party tries to shoot him but misses, no charges are pressed, and Yuri is totally enthralled by Lara and seems to have forgotten he is getting married that night. Lara ultimately marries the revolutionary, Pasha Antipov (Paul Nolan Alexander). On their wedding night, Pasha tells her he’s a virgin and she tells him about her life of sin with Viktor. In a furious fit, Pasha goes to war, climbs up the ranks and becomes the feared and dreaded Strelnikov (he’s even more sinister than Inspector Javert; you know, from the other epic musical).

Yuri, now a celebrated poet and doctor, is off mending the wounded at the war. Viktor is also there fighting for the overthrow of the government; he is very adaptable. He switches allegiances at the drop of a hat. Madness is all around, uprisings, starvation, famine communism, cannons being fired, people getting killed all over Russia, and you know that Russia is a humongous place but Yuri and Lara keep bumping into each other in all parts of Russia and their love is eternal as mentioned in the song “On the Edge of Time.” I’ve told you enough. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the pleasures that await you.

All this could be accepted, not forgiven, had the leads had any charm, charisma, personality anything appealing. Was there a shortage of leading men in America that they had to get Tam Mutu from England? Three men in love and obsessed with Lara, in this case Kelli Barrett; what did she possess that just never came across the footlights? Paul Alexander Nolan, who was quiet good as Jesus in the recent revival of Jesus Christ Superstar, starts out pleasant enough as Sasha but as Strelnikov is shrill and ludicrous barking out orders and shooting people. Oh, the revolution does take a toll on people. I must admit that Tom Hewitt had a grasp of his character, Viktor, and played him well.

I know all directors can have a misfire, but when it happens to one someone the likes of Des McAnuff, it is mind boggling how this musical was so out of control. After all, he was the visionary who was responsible for such musicals as Tommy, Jersey Boys, Big River and a splendid revival of How to Succeed...I know it’s a challenge to tackle the impossible, but even Mr. McAnuff must have sensed the odds against this pointless travesty.

Even the design aspects of this show are at odds with themselves: the sets represent nothing but stacked-up chairs and sometimes they are on fire; the costumes are too lavish for the impoverished Tonia and the Gromekos after the fall of the Czar when they didn’t even have enough food to set on the table. Just look at the picture of her in that gorgeous beige suit and hat; what woman wouldn’t kill for that outfit? And that is the show’s representation of a poor woman. The sound effects were too loud, I guess to try to keep us awake. So it goes, one misfire after another: story, book, score, players, direction, all forms of designs. Enough said, I think you get the picture.

ONE DREARY EVENING: Sophia Gennusa & Kelli Barrett in ‘Doctor Zhivago.’ Photo: Matthew Murphy

THE GOOD DOCTOR: Tam Matu as Doctor Zhivago. Photo: Matthew Murphy

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION SET TO MUSIC: (left to right) Paul Alexander Nolan, Kelli Barrett, Tam Matu & Lora Lee Gayer. Photo: Matthew Murphy

IMPOVERISHED, BUT ABLE TO AFFORD THAT CHIC SUIT & HAT: Lora Lee Gayer. Photo: Matthew Murphy

VIKTOR: Played well by Tom Hewitt. Photo: Matthew Murphy

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 25, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on April 24, 2015

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