‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: Brandon Micheal Hall, LaChanze & Chuck Cooper. Photo: Joan Marcus.

TROUBLE IN MIND
Written by Alice Childress
Directed by Charles Randolph-Wright
Through January 9, 2022
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street
(212-719-1300), www.RoundaboutTheatre.org

By David NouNou

Written and first performed in 1955 as an Off-Broadway show to critical acclaim, Trouble in Mind was meant to transfer to Broadway in 1957 but never came to fruition because the playwright, Alice Childress, refused to tone down the racial discourse in her play to make it more palatable for white audiences.

Being an actress herself, Ms. Childress was tired of playing maids and other types of demeaning roles, so she wrote this play within a play and created the role of Wiletta Mayer, the title character. Wiletta has been an actress for many years and has played by the rules of the stage games of complying with everything she has to do to stay in the game.

We meet Wiletta (LaChanze), walking across the stage on the first day of rehearsal, stopping center stage in order to absorb that solitary moment where she is alone on the stage and savoring the thrill of that magical moment. She is about to star in a drivel of a play set in the South. Fellow cast members waft in: John Nevins (Brandon Micheal Hall), a young actor who will be playing her son; Millie Davis (Jessica Frances Dukes), the best friend; Sheldon Forrester (Chuck Cooper), veteran of the stage playing Wiletta’s husband; Judy Sears (Danielle Campbell), the white ingénue who becomes friendly with John Nevins; and the imbecilic white director, Al Manners (Michael Zegen), a guy who has stereotypical notions of directing this show about a black family and whose word is the only word that counts.

On the third day of rehearsals, the fur begins to fly. The director wants all the wailing and flailing and broad gestures associated with black characters from his cast.  However, Wiletta tries to explain that she can’t play the character that way and wants to play it in a normal, natural, and real manner. Floodgates open.

Racial issues are at the core of this play but they are intertwined with both humor and seriousness that makes it relevant to this day.

LaChanze is a Broadway veteran who received her first acclaim and Tony nomination for Once On This Island and has never stopped being a force of nature. We know her mostly for her musical performances, but in Trouble in Mind, she hits new heights as a dramatic actress. Her blowup/meltdown in Act II leaves one breathless.

Michael Zegen, better known for playing Joel Maisel in Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” is in the unenviable role of delusional director, Al Manners. His name is an oxymoron.

Chuck Cooper adds nobility to every role he plays, and newcomer Jessica Frances Dukes keeps the laughs coming.

Not as universal in theme as Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Alice Childress shows the universality of what every African American actress has had to endure.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 22, 2021
Reviewed at November 21, 2021 press performance.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: LaChanze, Chuck Cooper & Michael Zegen. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: LaChanze. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: LaChanze. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: Jessica Frances Dukes & LaChanze. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: LaChanze & Simon Jones. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: Michael Zegen, Alex Mickiewicz & Don Stephenson. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘TROUBLE IN MIND’: Danielle Campbell & Michael Zegen. Photo: Joan Marcus.

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‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Campbell Scott. Photo: Joan Marcus

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
By Charles Dickens
Adapted by Jack Thorne
Directed by Matthew Warchus
Through January 5, 2020
Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200), www.AChristmasCarolBroadway.com

By David NouNou

Stripped of the treacle and mawkishness usually associated with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Jack Thorne has adapted and reshaped this tale into what would now be termed an “alternate universe.” Although being a purist at heart, one who normally prefers traditional presentations, I was nonetheless fascinated and enchanted by how this story maintains most of the central characters, with slight tweaks and character modifications. Mr. Thorne’s adaptation has slightly changed the dynamics and perception of an oft-told tale, with all the fat trimmed off.

Thanks in large part to Matthew Warchus’ seamless and fast-paced direction; one doesn’t dwell on the traditional version because Jack Thorne and Mr. Warchus allow the viewer to see Dickens’ classic from a different lens. Ebenezer Scrooge (Campbell Scott) is still a miserly crotchety skinflint but due to Mr. Scott’s youthful appearance, Ebenezer now has some sex appeal. Here, Mr. Thorne inserts Ebenezer’s cruel and drunken father (Chris Hoch), to show how Ebenezer took the wrong fork in the road to become what he is today.

Scrooge here does have psychological problems and doesn’t really see the error of his ways. Scrooge is still visited by the ghost of Marley (Chris Hoch), his late lending partner. Marley warns him about the ghosts that will come to visit him after midnight, and he better change his miserly ways. The Ghost of Christmas Past (Andrea Martin), Ghost of Christmas Present, replete with a Caribbean accent (La Chanze) and Ghost of Christmas Future (Rachel Prather) all make appearances. Ms. Prather doubles as well his late sister Fan in a dual role. His change here isn’t so much out of moral obligation as it is expeditious.

The two standout performances are, of course, Andrea Martin, a delight as usual, and La Chanze is imposing; the Caribbean accent is a bonus in all-too-brief moments. What is lacking is a dynamic Scrooge. It is interesting to note here that Mr. Scott’s father was the late George C. Scott, a formidable actor who gave a brilliant TV rendition of Scrooge. Campbell Scott, although a fine actor, lacks the forcefulness that his father brought to the role.

All in all, if you are looking for a slightly reimagined A Christmas Carol, along with Christmas carols, including “Joy to the World”, Silent Night, and “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” and a surprising immersive, interactive Christmas experience, I highly recommend this version. Coming out of the show, one feels the Christmas season has officially begun.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 24, 2019
Reviewed at November 23, 2019 press performance.

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’ (left to right) Andrea Martin, LaChanze, Campbell Scott (center) & Rachel Prather. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Campbell Scott & Dashiell Eaves. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Andrea Martin. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Campbell Scott & LaChanze. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Sarah Hunt & Campbell Scott. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Chris Hoch & Campbell Scott. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Campbell Scott. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: Campbell Scott. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

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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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