Shuffle Along

[+ Cash4Trash]

They're still working on this one and it's still too long (especially in the 1st act) but I really enjoyed this show.

So damn much talent on that stage. Ran 3 hours this afternoon.

[MscleLovr]

I saw it last Saturday. I too felt it's overlong. For me, there's simply too much info and time devoted to the backstory of the creators of the 1921 hit. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I had hoped given the cast. There are some great moments but the show is episodic; it's more an historical curiosity than a musical. FWIW when I saw it, it ran 2 hours 35 minutes excluding the intermission.

[edjames]

I haven't heard one good word about this production. Shame!

[+ beethoven]

I saw this last night (Tuesday), and I think it opens tomorrow. OK, I'll say a good word: it's ambitious, beautifully produced, has an energetic cast, and lots (and lots!) of excellent tap dancing -- which one would expect from Savon Glover.

However, "Shuffle Along" has problems, mainly that it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. The first act (80 minutes) is all over the place. One of the comments about the original 1921 production was that the book seemed to exist mainly to string the songs together. In 2016, the songs do nothing to advance the plot or explain the characters, and the 2016 book (by George C. Wolfe, also the director) is confusing. It's not hard to follow, but where it this going? What is it trying to say?

Audra MacDonald has a beautiful voice, and is gorgeously dressed, and lights up any stage she's on. But is she playing a Lottie Gee (the lead in 1921), or camping up these 1921 songs, or just being Audra MacDonald? All three, I think. Her interpretation of Eubie Blake's biggest hit, "Memories of You," is just awful. She sings it like an operatic aria; perhaps she or George C. Wolfe insisted that it be sung that way, but my friend and I hated it.

Evidently, the show hasn't been cut since others saw it in early April; last night, it began at 8, and we were out at 10:45. Intermission was 15 minutes.

 

Some in the audience went nuts after every number, some applauded politely, and some just sat there. We were in the middle group. I'll be interested in what the critics have to say. This morning, I spent about 30 minutes on Wikipedia, looking up Florence Mills and Adelaide Hall, and reading about the 1921 production and its significance to African-American performers and "colored" musicals in the 1920s.

It's difficult to recommend this (especially at these prices), but it has its strengths. It could be a lot better, though.

[edjames]

Review: ‘Shuffle Along’ Returns to Broadway’s Embrace

By BEN BRANTLEY APRIL 28, 2016

• So just what is it, this tart and sweet, bubbly and flat, intoxicating and sobering concoction being dispensed from the stage of the Music Box Theater? “Shuffle Along,” which opened with a whoop and a sigh on Thursday night, has been suffering from an identity crisis in the weeks leading up to the announcement of the Tony Award nominations.
   
  It shares its name and most of its song list with a landmark musical from 1921, which means this production should qualify as a revival, right? (That’s what its producers, for strategic purposes involving a juggernaut called “Hamilton,” have argued.)
   
  But wait a minute. The latest version of this show, which features immortal songs by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, has a subtitle, dangling like an heirloom earring: “Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed.” So is this “Shuffle Along” old or new?
   
  The answer is emphatically … both, though not in the ways you might expect.
   
  Directed by George C. Wolfe and choreographed by Savion Glover, both of whom collaborated to electric effect on “Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk” two decades ago, “Shuffle Along” is in some ways a variation on one of the mossiest stories from the book of Broadway. You know those beat-the-odds showbiz soaps that regularly surface in gritty black-and-white on the Turner Classic Movies channel?
   
  A plucky, can-do team of underdogs — tired of being told “no” — decide they’re going to put on their show, their way, and by golly if they don’t hit the big time, after the obligatory period of suspenseful hardship. But will the price of success be worth it when fame and fortune start breaking up that old gang of theirs?
   
  That old-as-the-Rialto story line is — bear with me — what’s new in this “Shuffle Along,” the part written by Mr. Wolfe, and it’s what feels stalest. The book of the original “Shuffle Along,” by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles, involved a mayoral campaign in a small town.
   
  The Broadway of the 1920s had no doubt seen similarly plotted shows. What made this one unusual was that its cast and, more startlingly, entire creative team were black. What made it a bona fide hit, running close to 500 performances, was the jaw-dropping virtuosity of its singing and dancing.
  Of course this show time-travels with plenty of baggage, which Mr. Wolfe unpacks with pedagogical annotations and sentimental mistiness. The determined stars-to-be played by Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell in the movie
  didn’t have to worry about landing a Broadway house because of the color of their skin. When the company of “Shuffle Along” finally sets up camp in New York, it’s 21 blocks north of 42nd Street, in “a theater of no consequence on a street of no consequence.”
   
  That dispirited assessment of the 63rd Street Theater is delivered by the gentlemanly Miller (played by Mr. Mitchell with charmingly stiff propriety), one of the four creators of “Shuffle Along.” The others are Lyles (Mr. Porter), Miller’s loudmouthed vaudeville partner, and the dapper songwriting team of Sissle (Joshua Henry) and Blake (Brandon Victor Dixon).
   
  Then there’s the show’s star, Lottie Gee (Ms. McDonald), a woman of worldly airs and regal carriage, who also happens to be the most talented gal on the Eastern Seaboard. (That means that Ms. McDonald is typecast.) In this telling of the show’s back story, Gee is having an affair with the married Blake, adding the requisite complicating romance in the wings.
   
  Rounding out the top of the bill are two captivating song stylists of different temperaments, both played deliciously by Adrienne Warren, in a breakout performance. Brooks Ashmanskas portrays all the Caucasian men of power who pave — or more often, obstruct — the show’s bumpy road to the Great White Way.
   
  Mr. Ashmanskas doesn’t overdo the music-hall villain aspects of these various incarnations. And toward the end, there’s a truly inspired sequence in which he plays Carl Van Vechten, the highbrow white connoisseur of black culture, who has a rhythmic debate (shades of “Hamilton”) with the “Shuffle Along” team about its place in posterity.
   
  Photo
  
  From left, Audra McDonald, Bill Porter, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Joshua Henry and Brandon Victor Dixon in the musical “Shuffle Along” at the Music Box Theater. CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
  That’s one of the few instances in which Mr. Wolfe translates academic, editorializing self-consciousness into scintillating present-tense theater, a wedding of sensibilities that was more consistently in evidence in “Noise/Funk.” It’s fun watching the standard “I’m Just Wild About Harry” transformed from a staid waltz into a piping-hot showstopper, or hearing a (possibly apocryphal) musical tale of musical theft, perpetrated by one George Gershwin. (Surprisingly, this production makes little of the disturbing theatrical potential of black stars like Miller and Lyles performing in blackface.)
   
  Often you sense that Mr. Wolfe has a checklist of historic points he must, but must, cover before the show’s end. These usually take the form of Wikipedia-style biographical summaries delivered to the audience, or melodramatic declarations that might in other contexts be played for camp. (“History’s calling. The song goes in tonight!”)
   
  The clunky, shoehorned-in exposition doesn’t overwhelm the sweeping grace of “Shuffle Along” whenever it sings or dances. As designed by a top-drawer team that includes Santo Loquasto (set), Ann Roth (costumes), Scott Lehrer (sound), and Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer (lighting), the show always looks terrific, evoking in eye-catching shorthand both the riches and privations of its characters’ lives. (Daryl Waters did the excellent orchestrations and arrangements.)
   
  This production also boasts the comeliest and most dynamic chorus on Broadway, which — under Mr. Glover’s guidance — transforms syncopated tap into a widely expressive force of giddy liberation and focused determination, of exaltation and anger, in numbers that include the knockout opener, “Broadway Blues,” and a fierce, competitive dance-off in the second act.
   
  The show’s principals, who also include the piquant Amber Iman, all more or less manage to bend their distinctive charismas into the sinuous contours of early Broadway jazz. But Ms. McDonald is a one-woman time machine de luxe, who translates the precise stylistic quirks of a bygone era into a melting immediacy. She also provides the most fully fleshed character in the show.
   
  She is a rare combination of divinity and discipline, instinct and intelligence. Firsthand accounts suggest that the real Lottie Gee possessed those same traits. One of the implicit tragedies within this show, which trails off into reflective melancholy in its conclusion, is that Gee was never allowed to reach the heights that Ms. McDonald inhabits with such assurance.
   
  

[bostonman]

The Tonys committee meets today to decide if this odd concoction of a show is going to be deemed (wrongly) a "revival" or a new show. If it's categorized as a revival, it will be spared losing against Hamilton (which is essentially the Producers of this season - refer back to the 2001 awards, when no other show stood a chance in hell, given the hype). But which decision would be more fair?

 

I also tend to feel that Brantley desperately wants McDonald to win her 7th Tony, lol. I think he's working too hard, IMO. I've always been an Audra fan myself, but somehow I wonder if Brantley is going a little overboard with hyperbole here.

[+ beethoven]

Ben Brantley ALWAYS goes overboard with hyperbole, IMHO.

[edjames]

Case closed...it's not a revival:

 

THEATER

Tonys Panel Rejects Bid to Label ‘Shuffle Along’ a Revival

 

 

By MICHAEL PAULSON APRIL 29, 2016

 

• “Shuffle Along” will have to face “Hamilton” after all.
   
  The committee of Broadway insiders that decides which productions will be eligible for which Tony awards declared on Friday that the show, with a full title of “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed,” is a new musical, despite efforts by its producers to have it called a revival.
   
  That means that “Shuffle Along” will compete for a nomination in a crowded category that includes the smash hit “Hamilton,” which is expected to win the best new musical prize when the Tonys are held on June 12. Tony awards, especially in that marquee category, help sell tickets.
   
  The question of how to think about “Shuffle Along,” which on Thursday night became the last show to open during the 2015-16 Broadway season, had become a hot topic in the industry, largely because its lead producer, Scott Rudin, is a prolific and powerful theater producer of the moment.
   
  Categorizing the show posed a challenge for the Tony Awards administration committee: Most of the songs are from the original 1921 production of “Shuffle Along,” but the book is entirely new. In 1921, the show was loosely about a race for mayor in a fictional town; the production that opened this week, replete with tap dancing, is about the evolution of the original show and the lives of its creative team and star.
   
  Mr. Rudin argued, in a letter to the committee, that “Shuffle Along” was akin to recent productions of “Flower Drum Song” and “Cinderella” that were deemed to be revivals despite substantially revised books. But a majority of committee members thought it was more analogous to shows like “Crazy for You” or even “Jersey Boys,” which paired classic songs with new books and were deemed to be new musicals. And earlier this week, the Drama Desk Awards, which are given by theater critics, declared “Shuffle Along” to be a new musical for the purposes of that contest.
   
  “Shuffle Along” is a passion project for George C. Wolfe, a Tony-winning director who wrote the new book for the show and directed it. The show, which pays homage to one of the first all-black musicals on Broadway, stars Audra McDonald, who has won six Tony awards. Also in the cast are Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Brandon Victor Dixon and Joshua Henry, all of whom were deemed by the committee to be featured actors, despite Mr. Rudin’s request that Mr. Mitchell be considered a leading actor.
   
  The jazzy score, featuring music from the original by Eubie Blake and lyrics by Noble Sissle, will not be eligible for a Tony award.
   
  In a statement, Mr. Rudin accepted the committee’s decisions. “George and I are grateful to the committee for their careful consideration,” he said. “The process is and always has been a fair one, and we’re flattered to be considered a new musical. You’d be hard pressed to find two people who love new musicals more than George and me.”
   
  “Shuffle Along,” which was capitalized at up to $12 million, has been doing well at the box office. It had four sold-out weeks in a row before attendance dipped slightly last week, when Ms. McDonald fell ill and missed three performances; the show grossed $809,033 over eight preview performances last week.
   
  On Thursday, Mr. Rudin told the ensemble that he would share revenues with performers who had helped develop the project. The issue of revenue- or profit-sharing has become a much-discussed concern among actors, prompted by the success of “Hamilton.” The producers of “Hamilton” agreed recently to share profits with actors involved in its development; Mr. Rudin had previously shared revenue with performers involved in the development of “The Book of Mormon.”
   
  “It felt like the fair thing to do,” he said in a statement. “This company of artists has been working on ‘Shuffle Along’ for nearly two years. They made the show with us. The show is about collaboration; they’re our collaborators.”
   
  The Tony awards process now begins in earnest. On Monday, a committee of up to 50 nominators is to meet to choose the nominees by secret ballot, and on Tuesday the nominees are to be announced. Eleven new musicals and five musical revivals are eligible for nominations.
   
  There are 846 theater professionals who can vote in this year’s Tony Awards, and they must file their ballots by June 10. The votes are then tallied, and the winners are to be announced at the awards ceremony on June 12.
  

[bostonman]

Mr. Rudin argued, in a letter to the committee, that “Shuffle Along” was akin to recent productions of “Flower Drum Song” and “Cinderella” that were deemed to be revivals despite substantially revised books. But a majority of committee members thought it was more analogous to shows like “Crazy for You” or even “Jersey Boys,” which paired classic songs with new books and were deemed to be new musicals. And earlier this week, the Drama Desk Awards, which are given by theater critics, declared “Shuffle Along” to be a new musical for the purposes of that contest.

 

How did Jersey Boys get into the discussion? (Has any jukebox show like that ever even been considered to be a revival??)

 

In any case, I feel the argument above slightly odd. Though the books were indeed drastically reinvented for the shows mentioned (Cinderella, Flower Drum Song, and even Crazy For You), they still remain strictly within the world of the characters in the story. (Taking Cinderella as an example, one could watch the three made-for-TV versions of the piece, see this latest revival, and see a school do the traditional stage version as licensed, and you'd see 5 very different takes on the material itself. But you'd recognize them all as the story of Cinderella in one way or another, just with some different book/song elements in each one.) It's clear from the outset that this new musical called Shuffle Along is NOT just a rewriting of the original property, but uses the original materials as a subplot of sorts to explore the making of the 1921 show. That's a very different thing. (If someone were to write a new musical tracing the genesis of all the different versions of R&H's Cinderella, I'd think of it in the same way. The songs might be the ones you'd expect, but the purpose of the show would be altogether different.

 

All to say, I can't figure out what took this decision so long to make.

[edjames]

Major Cast Change alert!!!

 

Audra McDonald, 45, to take pregnancy leave from Broadway

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/dd8b1baf67130a1edc52e1868cb7f1ece5f42a54/r=26&c=26x26/local/-/media/USATODAY/staff/images/v2/Gardner_Elysa.png Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY 3:43 p.m. EDT May 10, 2016

 

Audra McDonald may not win a Tony Award this year, but she has an even more joyful event in store,

 

The six-time Tony winner and star of best-musical nominee Shuffle Along — whose nine other nods for Broadway's biggest prize did not, shockingly, include one for McDonald, a longtime critical and audience favorite — announced Tuesday that she is expecting her second child, at the age of 45.

 

“Who knew that tap dancing during perimenopause could lead to pregnancy?" McDonald quipped in a statement. She and husband and fellow performer Will Swenson, who has two children by his previous marriage (McDonald has a daughter from hers), "are completely surprised — and elated — to be expecting a new addition to our family." (It will be the couple's first child together.)

 

In addition to starting maternity leave from Shuffle Along July 24, McDonald will have to postpone her West End debut in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, which earned her a Tony for her portrait of Billie Holiday, In Shuffle Along, McDonald plays another real-life (if lesser-known) artist, the '20s stage performer Lottie Gee —a role that will be played in McDonald's absence by Rhiannon Giddens.

 

During Giddens' run, the show also will welcome its renowned choreographer and celebrated tap dancer Savion Glover into the company.

 

McDonald added in her statement, "I’m glad I’ll be able to spend a little more time in Shuffle Along this summer and will look forward to setting up a 1920s-themed nursery in my dressing room when I return to the show.”

[RyanDean]

I was interested to see the show before and I count myself an Audra fan.

That said, I'm now so so so very excited to wait until August to see Rhiannon Giddens in the role/show.