On Broadway: 'Memphis' and 'Bye Bye Birdie'
NEW YORK--The new musical “Memphis” has the guts to involve itself in the smoldering all-American conflagration of sex, music and race.
Set mostly in mid-1950s Tennessee, the latest project from Joe DiPietro (“I Love You, You’re Perfect…”) takes a sympathetic look at a white DJ—played with quirky charisma by Chad Kimball—who starts playing black music on the radio, excites whites kids, and puts one of the first cracks in the Memphis color barrier. Kimball’s character, Huey Calhoun, also falls in love with Felicia (Montego Glover), one of the Beale Street musicians whose work he promotes.
As you might expect, that does not go well.
DiPietro writes according to the book—you can guess plot developments here well in advance of their occurrence and characters state their narrative intensions like you or I would state our name. And the show walks tricky lines. It wouldn’t be fair to call this a wholly idealized look at race and music—there are violent episodes of conflict—but the atmosphere will be still be too avowedly perky for some. And although most of the cast of this show is African-American, this is still a show with a white hero, making things possible for black folks.Yet for all that, “Memphis” is a very good time. It’s not a juke-box musical, but comes with a new score by David Bryan that might not chart new worlds, but has rich and bouncy melodies that surely stick in your skull. Better yet, Sergio Tujillo (“Jersey Boys”) has created some thrilling, body-twisting choreography performed (on the night I saw the show, at least) with huge commitment, boundless energy and infectious heart. Director Christopher Ashley (“Xanadu”) knows how to create fast-paced theatrical thrills without losing that crucial referent in truth. He knows further how to switch the mood of a show in a heartbeat. He has the juke-joynt rapt.
But Kimball—who approaches this role from the sides and forges a genuine iconoclast—is the show’s biggest asset. He snakes his way through the potholes of Memphis like Christian Slater with a big voice. You can’t help but like him and want the very changes you already know are coming.“Bye Bye Bridie” is known as a sweet-and-gentle staple of the high-school repertoire, but this 1958 show with book by Michael Stewart, lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse actually explored the sexual anxiety of its era.
Sure, the Broadway musical was trying to come to terms with the new corrupting power of rock ‘n’ roll on small-town youth: Conrad Birdie was inspired by Elvis. But this was also a prescient piece about rise of media-created superstars and the hegemony of coastally created celebrities, dispensed to unsettle the good people of the hinterlands and thus sell them stuff. There’s even an early look here of the destructive power of reality TV.
The eye-poppingly disastrous revival at the Roundabout Theatre from director/choreographer Robert Longbottom has no demonstrable interest in any of these human or cultural truths, preferring to deliver a tacky, day-glo 1950s cartoon, wherein the good citizens of Ohio look and act like smiling, dancing, screaming M & Ms.One could perhaps tolerate the condescension of the staging, if the singing were not so wretched. You have to wonder how anybody thought Gina Gershon had the vocal chops to play Rose Alvarez, and from John Stamos to Bill Irwin, the rest of this cast look and act like they are trapped in an inorganic timewarp fantasy not of their own creation.
And if Elvis/Conrad had the level of charisma dispensed by Nolan Gerard Funk? The girls of Sweet Apple, Ohio would have stuck with Perry Como.
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