On 23 May 1921, an odd little musical fillip opened at Daly’s 63rd Street Music Hall, 22 West 63rd Street in Manhattan, “a theater of no consequence on a street of no consequence” about ten blocks above the northern reaches of what’s usually considered the Broadway theater district. (Between Central Park West and Broadway, Daly’s was about 1½ blocks east of where Lincoln Center now stands, in the neighborhood of slums and tenements where, four decades later, West Side Story was filmed before it was razed by New York City’s master builder, Robert Moses, to make way for the performing arts complex.) Off the beaten track for commercial theater, there wasn’t much in the show that marked it as even a modest hit: it had a silly plot on which to string its music, but oooh! that music and the dances that went with them. By the time the curtain came down on the première of Shuffle Along, it was a certifiable smash by any standards of the day. The début production—there would be revivals and national tours—closed on 15 July 1922 after 484 performances in an era when long runs were unknown. (The remake says there were 504 performances, but I don’t know where the discrepancy comes from. Adding the total performances from the 1921, ’33, and ’52 productions comes to 505. Though the production’s promotional literature specifies the 504 figure was the New York run, perhaps it actually includes the performances in Shuffle Along’s test runs outside the city.)
The expectations Shuffle
Along defied started with its cast—all African-American performers. In the early years of the 20th century, that
was exceedingly rare. Institutional and
deliberate racism and a paternalistic attitude toward African Americans by
white society took an immense toll on the show’s creators and performers. Among other issues with which they had to
contend was the tradition that black performers had to appear in blackface, a common
but disturbing aspect of the era, because blacks weren’t accepted as genuine
human beings on stage; by the same token, a love song or realistic romantic
relationship between black characters was unacceptable to white audiences—the
actors could actually be tarred and feathered by angry spectators—until Shuffle Along braved the potential backlash. (Though Shuffle
Along overcame these potential problems, they weren’t erased and some of
the play’s follow-up was caused by white America’s innate bigotry—though, as the remake
makes clear, some was also generated by the prickly personality conflicts among
the four creative artists.)
Beyond that, it was the first piece of theater in the United
States that became a general success, meaning with white audiences, that was written by black artists. The book of Shuffle Along was the creation of two black vaudevillians, F. E.
(Flournoy) Miller (1885-1971) and Aubrey Lyles (1884-1932), based on one of
their comedy sketches, “The Mayor of Jimtown.”
The jazz score was composed by the song-writing team of James Hubert
(Eubie) Blake (1887-1983), who wrote the music, and Noble Sissle (1889-1975),
lyrics. No one had seen anything like Shuffle Along before; even the great
“black” musicals of the coming decades were created by white writers and
composers: Porgy and Bess (1935), music by George Gershwin, lyrics by
Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, and book by Heyward; Cabin in the Sky (1940), music by Vernon Duke, lyrics by
John Latouche, and book by Lynn Root. (I
saw an Encores! concert performance of Cabin last winter and posted a
report on ROT on 23 February 2016. Some history, including a
mention of Shuffle Along, appears in that report.)
F. E. (Flournoy) Miller and Aubrey Lyles, a pair of
Tennesseans (Miller from Columbia and Lyles from Jackson), met as students at
Nashville’s Fisk University, where Lyles was studying medicine. They launched
their performing careers while at school, but in 1905, the duo were hired as
resident playwrights for the African-American Pekin Theater Stock Company in
Chicago where they introduced the characters of Steve Jenkins and Sam Peck (the
roles they played in Shuffle Along). They went to New York in 1909 and began
performing in vaudeville and by 1912, they had become the vaudeville duo of
Miller and Lyles and were touring the United States. In 1915, they traveled to
England to perform. Their blackface
comedy act consisted of Southern small-town humor and dance sequences. Shuffle
Along, the ground-breaking musical they created with Sissle and Blake, ran
until 1924 and Miller and Lyles went on to write plays and make recordings, but
the act broke up in 1928. The performers
reunited to appear on radio. After
Lyles’s death from tuberculosis at 48, Miller became increasingly engaged in
the film business, moving to Hollywood to write and act in many motion pictures
from the 1930s to the 1950s, including several black Westerns. He died in Hollywood at age 86.
Jazz composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer, and playwright
Noble Sissle, son of a minister and a school teacher, was born in
Indianapolis. As a youth, he sang in the
choir of his father’s church and in his high school glee club before attending
DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and then Butler University in
Indianapolis. He left college to devote
himself to music full time. Just before
the World War I armistice, Sissle joined the famed 369th Infantry Regiment, the
Harlem Hellfighters, and performed as a singer, violinist, and drum major with
the regimental band under ragtime and jazz bandleader Lt. James Reese Europe,
mustering out after the war as a second lieutenant. He continued with Europe’s civilian successor
of the band where he worked with pianist-composer Blake. The two musicians had met in 1915 in
Baltimore, where Blake was born. They
started writing songs together and eventually appeared in vaudeville as the
Dixie Duo before moving on to playwriting.
In 1923, following the success of Shuffle
Along, the duo appeared in two sound films featuring songs on which the
pair had collaborated. Sissle made other
films into the ’30s and in 1954 signed with Loew’s Theatre Organization to
appear as a disc jockey at one of its radio stations on which he featured the
music of African-American artists; he died at 86 in Tampa, Florida.
Blake, born in 1887 according to official records (though he
insisted it was 1883) to parents who’d been born into slavery, started music
training when he was as young as four or five.
He was declared a musical prodigy but began his paying career as a
pianist, unbeknownst to his parents, at a Baltimore brothel at 15. He claims that he composed his first piece of
music, “Charleston Rag,” in 1899, when he 12, but he didn’t yet know how to write music
so it wasn’t written down until 1915. In
1912, he joined Europe’s Society Orchestra (which played for the dance team of
Vernon and Irene Castle) and after the World War, Blake rejoined Europe and his
pre-war colleague Sissle until the two musicians formed their vaudeville act
and went on to write songs and musical shows.
Twice-married, Blake was also known, much to his wives’ chagrin, as a
ladies’ man; it became an open secret among the Shuffle Along company that the composer was in love with his
leading lady, Lottie Gee (1886-1973), who also had considerable influence on
the content of the musical. (It was Gee
who insisted that “I’m Just Wild About Harry” be rearranged from a waltz to an
up-beat one-step.) After Shuffle Along, Blake joined Sissle in
the films that featured their work and a third of his own compositions. Blake played for the USO during World War II
and, after enrolling in New York University in 1946 (at the age of 59) when his
career was diminishing, he saw the interest in ragtime pick up again in the
’50s and his career along with it, culminating in the 1978 Broadway revue of
his songs, Eubie!, which ran for 439
performances (and was filmed in 1981).
He appeared on numerous television shows in the ’70s (including Johnny
Carson’s Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live) and received many honors, including the Presidential Medal of
Freedom from Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Blake died at 96 (or 100, if you take his word for it) in Brooklyn. (ROT
contributor Kirk Woodward mentions seeing Blake perform in his article “Some Of
That Jazz,” posted on 7 June 2015.)
According to the website for Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All
That Followed, which revisits the 1921 hit, songwriters Sissle and Blake and vaudevillians
Miller and Lyles learned of each other from bandleader Europe. The two teams met at an NAACP benefit in
Philadelphia in 1920, and Miller and Lyles thought
that one of their sketches, “The Mayor of Jimtown,” could become a full-length
musical. Though none of the four had
ever written a musical play before or worked on Broadway, the result of their
maiden collaboration was Shuffle Along.
Among the play’s gifts was the hit tune “I’m Just Wild About
Harry,” Shuffle’s most famous song
(borrowed by Harry S Truman as the theme song for his 1948 presidential run),
and the ballad “Love Will Find a Way” (of which the opening-night audience
demanded an encore). During Shuffle Along’s run, future black stars
such as Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, Fredi Washington, and
Adelaide Hall appeared on the Daly’s
stage; the orchestra included future symphony and opera composer William Grant
Still and Nat “King” Cole was a pianist on a national tour. In the weeks that followed the opening, New
York theatergoers from all over the city beat a path to Daly’s. “It seemed to attract this highbrow/lowbrow,
uptown/downtown phenomenon,” observed George C. Wolfe, director of the new re-examination
of the play. Among the ticket-seekers
were so many fellow actors that Shuffle
Along scheduled a midnight performance on Wednesdays so they could see the
show. The traffic along the upper-west
side street became so heavy that the city had to make 63rd a one-way street.
Among the famous figures who came to see the phenomenon were then-novice poet Langston Hughes, George Gershwin, singer-actress Ethel Waters, singer-movie star Al Jolson, Ziegfeld Follies comedienne Fanny Brice, esteemed African-American actor Charles Gilpin, and renowned theater critic George Jean Nathan. A persistent tale, of which the new re-examination makes a major point, was that Gershwin stole riffs from Blake to create “I Got Rhythm” in a case of cultural appropriation. Audiences at Shuffle Along were mixed, but the theater still segregated the spectators by race in the auditorium, even though they mingled in the lobby and the aisles during intermission and after the performance. According to Wolfe, Shuffle Along was “the catalyst” for “different worlds . . . meeting on that stage, and backstage, and there was this connection. And some people credit it with creating this energy in downtown culture at the time, where there was this phenomenon of slumming and going to Harlem.”
Among the famous figures who came to see the phenomenon were then-novice poet Langston Hughes, George Gershwin, singer-actress Ethel Waters, singer-movie star Al Jolson, Ziegfeld Follies comedienne Fanny Brice, esteemed African-American actor Charles Gilpin, and renowned theater critic George Jean Nathan. A persistent tale, of which the new re-examination makes a major point, was that Gershwin stole riffs from Blake to create “I Got Rhythm” in a case of cultural appropriation. Audiences at Shuffle Along were mixed, but the theater still segregated the spectators by race in the auditorium, even though they mingled in the lobby and the aisles during intermission and after the performance. According to Wolfe, Shuffle Along was “the catalyst” for “different worlds . . . meeting on that stage, and backstage, and there was this connection. And some people credit it with creating this energy in downtown culture at the time, where there was this phenomenon of slumming and going to Harlem.”
In the story of Shuffle
Along, two crooked grocery store owners, Sam Jenkins (Lyles—in blackface) and
Steve Peck (Miller—ditto) run for mayor of all-black Jimtown, Dixieland (“Election
Day”). (The two characters of Sam and
Steve were longtime vaudeville personae of Lyles and Miller.) The business partners promise each other that
the winner will appoint the other police chief.
Honest Harry Walton (Roger Matthews), their opposing candidate for mayor
(“I’m Just Wild About Harry”), pledges to put an end to the corruption, but he
refuses to engage in his opponents’ dirty tactics and loses. Harry’s engaged to the lovely Jessie Williams
(Lottie Gee), but her father (Paul Floyd) won’t allow them to marry unless
Harry wins the election (“Love Will Find a Way”). Sam’s elected with assistance from Jimtown’s vote-buying
political boss, Tom Sharper (Sissle),
and keeps his promise to make Steve chief of police. The two politicians, however, quarrel over all
kinds of things and they resolve their disagreements with an extended comic
fight-ballet (“Jimtown’s Fisticuffs”). Sam
and Steve continue to argue until their
dishonesty and thievery is exposed by Jack Penrose, a New York detective known
as “Keeneye” (Lawrence Deas), hired by Sharper.
Harry’s named the new mayor and runs Sam and Steve out of town.
The show was interspersed with comedy blackouts and songs in
front of the curtain essentially used to cover set changes. (It was also rife with both black and rural Southern
stereotyped behavior, jokes, and minstrelsy, including characters named Uncle
Tom and Old Black Joe.) The end of the
performance has no dialogue after Harry’s inauguration, but Blake, who
conducted the orchestra in 1921, came on stage and, joined by Sissle, stepping
out of his role as Sharper, did a set of whatever they wanted from their
songbook. After the impromptu concert,
Blake would return to the orchestra and Sissle resumed his role as Tom Sharper
for the finale (“African Dip”).
After its initial New York run, Shuffle Along went
out on tour, playing in Boston and Chicago and then continuing across the
country to Milwaukee, Des Moines, Peoria, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Toledo,
Grand Rapids, Detroit, Buffalo, Rochester, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City. Still performing before mixed audiences, Shuffle
Along did what no African-American show had dared in what were usually
whites-only theaters.
(Before the New York opening, Miller, Lyles, Sissle, and Blake
previewed some of their songs for producer John Cort, 1859-1929, with the help
of manager Al Mayer of the Nikko Producing Company, Shuffle Along’s production company.
Cort, for whom Broadway’s present-day Cort Theatre is named, was so
taken by “Love Will Find a Way” that he financed a two-month tour to try the
show out on the road, the company’s first performances before paying audiences. Without scenery and using costumes pulled
from stock, the show started in New Jersey, moved on to Washington, D.C., and
Maryland, and concluded with a series of one-night stands in Pennsylvania.
(On a personal and nostalgic note, I was thrilled during Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical
Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, the reexamination of the 1921 hit,
when D.C.’s Howard Theatre came up as the venue for the performance of Shuffle
Along in Washington. When I was a boy, my dad’s company, District
Theatres Corporation, owned the Howard—though not until after World War II. Long converted to a movie house, it still did
a live show in those days: concerts by the likes of Pearl Bailey, Ella
Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis, and native Washingtonian Duke Ellington, or comedy
shows with “Moms” Mabley, “Pigmeat” Markham—in his first and second careers—and
Redd Foxx. I did a post on the two
historical flagships of the company, “Lincoln & Howard Theatres: Stages of
History,” 2 December 2011.)
Five-time Tony-winning director and producer George C. Wolfe
(Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,
1993; Angels in America: Perestroika,
1994 – Best Play; Bring in ’da Noise,
Bring in ’da Funk, 1996; Elaine
Stritch At Liberty, 2002 – Best Special Theatrical Event; Take Me Out, 2003 – Best Play) began
piecing together the story of how Shuffle
Along came to be, having discovered that pretty much all the facts other
than its historic run and some now-famous names had been lost to the footnotes
of the history of the American musical.
There’d been a couple of revivals of Shuffle
Along, but neither had been remotely successful: one in 1933 ran 17
performances and one in 1952 ran 4. So
Wolfe decided he had to do something different to bring this important piece of
theater history back to the public’s consciousness. Featuring the original show’s music and lyrics
by Blake and Sissle, and a new book by Wolfe inspired by the 1921 text by
Miller and Lyles, the new Shuffle
Along, Or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed
(a title way too long to be this
report’s headline!) simultaneously tells the backstage story of Shuffle Along’s creation—and how it changed
the theater world it found when it arrived on Broadway.
Born in Frankfort, Kentucky, Wolfe, 61, is also a playwright
and lyricist, having penned the books for 1992’s Jelly’s Last Jam and 2000’s The
Wild Party, in addition to Shuffle
Along: The Making (as I’ll call the new show for short to distinguish it
from the original musical), and the lyrics for Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk in 1996 (which he also
conceived). He studied theater at Pomona
College in Claremont, California, and then got an MFA from the dramatic writing
program of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1983. After writing his first play, Tribal Rites, or The Coming of the Great
God-bird Nabuku to the Age of Horace Lee Lizer (which the playwright described
as “some sort of homage to Abraham Lincoln”), while teaching in inner-city Los Angeles (it was produced in L.A.
in 1977), he had some success Off-Broadway in New York with the musical (with
composer Robert Forrest) Paradise (1985, Playwrights Horizons) and the
play The Colored Museum (1986, Joseph Papp Public Theater); in 1989,
Wolfe won an Obie for best Off-Broadway director for his adaptation of three
Zora Neale Hurston tales in Spunk (Joseph Papp Public Theater).
Wolfe leapt to national renown in 1991 with his L.A. staging
of Jelly’s Last Jam, a musical about ragtime
and jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Jelly Roll Morton with Gregory Hines
in the title role, which moved to Broadway in 1992 and garnered 11 Tony
nominations. That was followed in 1993 by
his Tony-winning production of the first part of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and in 1994 by the
second part. From 1993 to 2004, Wolfe served
as artistic director of the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater (the
second successor to founder Joseph Papp).
While in that post, Wolfe created Bring
In ’da Noise, Bring In ’da Funk with young Savion Glover (1995), which
moved to Broadway in ’96. In 2000, he co-wrote the book and directed
the Broadway production of Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party. After
leaving NYSF to pursue film directing, Wolfe staged many New York productions,
including the 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winner by Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog, at the Public in 2001
and on Broadway in 2002. He’s active in
civil and human rights causes and was installed in the American Theater Hall of
Fame in 2013.
Shuffle Along: The
Making started previews at the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street, west
of Broadway, on 15 March and opened on 28 April for an open-ended commercial
run. It was nominated for 10 Tony
Awards, including Best Musical, but won none.
It did win four Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Musical, out of
seven nominations, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. My friend Kirk Woodward, his daughter Erin,
and I saw the new musical on Wednesday evening, 15 June. (The show’s producers have announced Shuffle Along: The Making’s unexpected
closing for 24 July; see my exit comments below.)
It’s substantially from this historical material that
director and book-writer Wolfe composed the narrative of Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All
That Followed. Wolfe’s intent is to
demonstrate the historic and social importance of the original creation and its
phenomenal success to modern American theater and culture, and black history. He wants then to go on and examine “how
something could go from so significant to ending up as someone’s footnote.” The director/book-writer asserts that Shuffle Along “just seems to me this
seed from which a whole lot of other things sprang forth. So when you’re in the
historical moment the show is set in, you feel you’re in that moment, but
you’re also in 2016 . . . .”
Act one of the new meta-musical is the backstage saga of
“the making” of 1921’s Shuffle Along,
and act two is “all that followed,” covering both the response by the American
theater and the American public and the after-history of the artists involved
in the sensation that was Shuffle
Along. (The original Miller-Lyles
“Mayor of Jimtown” plot of Shuffle Along was
jettisoned, which is clearly why the 2016 Tony committee wouldn’t let Shuffle Along: The Making compete as a
revival. Aside from the Blake-Sissle
score, this is an entirely new play, telling a totally different story from its
1921 source.)
The act one-act two split is why I found myself a little
disturbed by the ending—really the whole second act. It’s such a
downer—nothing but disputes, rivalries, jealousy, break-ups, bad luck—and
finally deaths. After the exuberance of
act one, it’s a come-down. Given the material Wolfe’s working with—the
history and the aftermath of Shuffle Along—I don’t see what else he
could have done—but I wonder if there isn’t some other route he could have
taken than the one he chose. I get that this is part of his point—he feels
that Shuffle Along, and especially the creative and participating
artists, have been forgotten by theater and cultural history (as critic and patron
of the Harlem Renaissance Carl Van Vechten, 1880-1964, played by Brooks
Ashmanskas, sings prophetically to the show’s creators towards the end of the
play: “They won’t remember you!”)—but maybe that isn’t the only way to conclude
the play. I’m no playwright, so I don’t know what else a writer might
come up with—but just because something’s true doesn’t mean you have to use it
in the play (or novel or movie, or whatever). I said something very
similar with regard to John Patrick Shanley’s Prodigal
Son (see
my report on 28 February 2016), and George Bernard Shaw, who knew a thing or
two about playwriting, wrote (in his preface to “The Six of Calais”): “Life as we see
it is so haphazard that it is only by picking out its key situations and
arranging them in their significant order (which is never how they actually
occur) that it can be made intelligible.”
(I note here that Kirk Woodward has written a five-part response to all Shaw’s
plays and prefaces, which he read in one sitting, and which I’ll be posting in
installments shortly on this blog. This
statement, one of two Kirk quotes on the same point, is in the last section of
Kirk’s series, which will be entitled “Re-Reading Shaw.”) In any case, I haven’t decided how I
feel, as a consumer, about this ending. I’m unsettled, so to speak.
I reported that Kirk and his daughter were my companions for
this show, and naturally we’ve talked about it some afterwards. When I raised these second thoughts about the
play’s ending, Kirk, who is a playwright (including of musicals), responded, “It
seemed to me that the structure of Shuffle
Along[:The Making] resembles that
of [Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1986] Into the Woods. In the first
act adversity is overcome and everyone is exhilarated at the end of the act. In the second act, trouble—a giant, or envy
and competition—enters the picture and the whole thing turns gloomy.” I hadn’t considered this structural parallel
(I haven’t seen Into the Woods since
1988), but Kirk continued, “I also think that Wolfe is committed to educating
his audience, and finds it almost impossible to finish with a ‘happy ending.’” A bit later, he added, “I’m afraid he just
feels the burden of history too heavily to, for example, let the show end with
its opening (if the musical could have been stretched out that long—this is
just theory).”
I’d been thinking the same thing about Wolfe’s tendencies.
But as I said, just because it happened in history doesn’t mean it has to
be part of the play. It’s not, however, that it ruined the performance
for me. It just bothers me a little—dramaturgically. Shuffle Along: The Making’s hardly a documentary play (though a
couple of reviewers did use that term to label it), but one of the criticisms
of that form is that it’s often better history/current events than it is
drama/theater. (I wrote an article on the documentary play, “Performing Fact:
The Documentary Drama,” in which I touch on this issue. The article was posted on 9 October 2009.) Wolfe’s proclivity, if Kirk and I are right
in parsing it, may fall into that trap. (I gather, however, that Lin-Manuel
Miranda’s mega-hit Hamilton doesn’t go there—if the audience and
critical response is any indication.)
The work of Shuffle
Along: The Making—especially the “presentation” (I haven’t come up with a better
word yet)—is terrific. I like the presentational style (to use the same
word in a different sense) and the “present reference” (as when Lottie Gee/Audra
McDonald talks directly to the band in the pit) a lot. I don’t know
if Wolfe meant it to—I suspect he did—but it was reminiscent to me of
vaudeville itself (which is where Lyles, Miller, Blake, and Sissle all came
from, of course).
By presentation I mean more than just the staging. It’s the aggregate of Wolfe’s directing,
Savion Glover’s magnificent choreography, the acting, acting style, and
ensemble work, all as an expression and out-growth of the staging concept—the
“look” Wolfe conceived above and beyond the stage design (Santo Loquasto’s
scenery, Ann Roth’s costumes, Scott Lehrer’s sound, Jules Fisher and Peggy
Eisenhauer’s lighting—all of which are evocative, witty, and delightful) in
coordination with the musical direction of Shelton Becton. It’s the way Wolfe and his whole team stage
the material, the way they show it to us.
Part of that concept is the presentational style of performance, which
includes direct address to the audience or the breaking of the fourth wall, the
theater expression that means that instead of the audience and the performers
being in separate planes, with the dimensional “wall” across the proscenium
opening, the actors and the play lower that barrier and relate to us in real
time and space, as if we’re all in the same room. (The opposite style is “representational,”
meaning that the actor’s inhabit their characters and aren’t present as
performers or for us as people. They
exist in a world into which we can see—that fourth wall is, of course,
invisible—but in which we can’t participate.)
Another manifestation of the presentation style Wolfe and
his company devised is what I called present reference, defined as a character’s
acknowledgment of people, objects, or actions on stage
with them. (Present reference is
one of the connective devices I discuss in “Theatrical Structure,” 15 and 18
February 2011.) It draws us into the
real-time event occurring on stage while were in the theater with the
performers (that is, the performance), rather than watching a representation of
events, real or fictional, that occurred at some time in the past and are being
recreated for our consumption. It’s a
way of nudging us to look critically at the actions being demonstrated for us,
in this case the creation of 1921’s Shuffle
Along and its aftermath, rather than becoming emotionally absorbed into a
fiction and abandoning our objectivity.
(For those who haven’t already tumbled to it, these are Brechtian practices,
but they’ve been incorporated into mainstream staging techniques.)
In terms of performances, Shuffle Along: The Making is an odd duck. The cast’s loaded with stars, emerging stars,
and A-list Broadway actors—Brian Stokes Mitchell (2000 Tony and Drama Desk
Awards for Kiss Me Kate) is Miller, Brandon Victor Dixon (2004
Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Hedwig and
the Angry Inch) is Blake, Joshua Henry (2007 Drama Desk Award for In
the Heights) is Sissle, Audra McDonald (6 Tonys—a record, 5 Drama Desks, 1
Theatre World) as Lottie Gee, and Brooks Ashmanskas (2007 Tony and Drama Desk
nominations for Martin Short: Fame
Becomes Me) plays an assortment of very important figures in the
history—which isn’t a common pathway to ensembleness. Yet that’s what Wolfe and his troupe have wrought—and
it’s fabulous to see. (Billy Porter, who
usually portrays Aubrey Lyles, was ably replaced the evening we saw Shuffle Along: The Making by Arbender
Robinson, Porter’s understudy.) Despite
their distinction as “stars,” these five actors blended in splendidly with each
other and the rest of the company, who each often stood out as one or another
of the several characters they played in the Shuffle Along saga.
Additionally the performance of Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All
That Followed is such a whirlwind of action, dancing, singing, and scenes
(some short, some extended—Shuffle Along:
The Making is a 2¾-hour
performance with one intermission) that it’s difficult to spotlight any single
performance. If forced, I’d have to note
Mitchell’s suave yet earnest F. E. Miller and McDonald’s monumentally talented
and confident leading lady, Lottie Gee.
(In McDonald’s hands, Gee’s scene with replacement actress Florence Mills,
1895-1927, played by Adrienne Warren, training her how to put across a song the
right way, is endearing—and not a little daunting. Not long before seeing Shuffle Along: The Making, I watched the actress’s portrait of
Billie Holiday in the HBO broadcast of Lady
Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill and the difference between her assured Gee
and the disintegrating Holiday is remarkable.)
I can’t really write a report on this show without at least
mentioning Glover’s choreography.
Glover, of course, has been a dance phenom since he first tapped onto
the scene in The Tap Dance Kid (1983)
when he was 10. Not only is his dance
style exciting and powerful, with his signature loud, hard taps, but he passes
this power along to his dancers, whether they’re students he’s teaching (which
he’s done since he was 14 in Newark, New Jersey) or pros he’s choreographing,
as here. (Glover had to invent his own
dances for Shuffle Along: The Making,
which make no pretense of hewing to period style, since the dances of Lawrence
Deas, the original’s choreographer, have been lost.) He’s also learned, as exemplified in Bring In ’da Noise, how to make tap,
traditionally used in theater to invoke high spirits and exuberance, express
some more complex emotions like anger, pain, and sorrow. You can’t really miss Glover’s hand (or foot)
in the dances of Shuffle Along: The
Making—his tapping is uniquely his own, and works so well with this
production. (Of course, he and Wolfe have a long history of collaboration
starting in 1992 with his performance as Young Jelly in Jelly’s Last Jam, so their names are sort of linked, at least in my
mind. In a move that’s now obviated, Glover
was slated to join the cast of Shuffle
Along: The Making on stage on 26 July, though his role in the musical had
not been determined.)
Based on a survey of 46 reviews, Show-Score gave Shuffle Along: The Making an average of
84, with 87% positive notices, 13% mixed, and just 2% negative. That’s not a surprising spread, given the
quality of the work. Let’s see what the
reviewers have said.
Among the highest-scoring notices was Elysa Gardner’s in USA Today, in which she declared that
despite what might be called the Hamilton
Effect, Shuffle Along: The Making
“qualifies” as “an event.” (Gardner went
on to quip: “. . . and not just for the length of its title.”) Asserted Gardner, “The stars, all
excellent, provide portraits that are at once recognizably human and
lavishly entertaining” and the production “also benefits, greatly, from the
exuberant gifts of choreographer Savion Glover.” In the end, the USA Today reviewer labeled Shuffle
Along: The Making “exhilarating” as a “tribute” that “burns . . .
brightly.” Also high in Show-Score’s survey was the New York edition of London’s Financial Times in which Max McGuinness
wrote that the “Pirandellian meta-musical is at once an old-fashioned
all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza and a thoughtful meditation on the
history of race relations.” And while McGuinness
characterized Mitchell’s F. E. Miller as “Sidney Poitier-esque” (clearly meant
as a compliment, but I wonder how welcome to Mitchell), the FT review-writer proclaimed that “[a]mid
an all-round impressive ensemble,” the “real star power comes from Audra
McDonald” who displays “infectious exuberance and sass.” McGuinness did single out Ashmanskas “for the
dexterity with which he performs all of the white parts.” Overall, the reviewer for the Pink ’Un found,
“Wolfe lays on the exposition a little thick at times. But his Shuffle is a
courageous work on many levels.” In his
assessment, McGuinness reported, as I have: “In a breach with musical
convention, there is no happy ending.”
In the Wall Street
Journal, several rungs lower on the ratings ladder, Terry Teachout made
this comparison: “The first half of George C. Wolfe’s ‘Shuffle Along’ is to
2016 what ‘Hamilton’ was to 2015: It’s the musical you’ve got to see, even if
you’ve got to hock your Maserati to pay for the ticket.” Teachout styled the cast “as charismatic as
you’d expect,” praising Glover’s “near-nonstop choreography,” which the WSJ reviewer reported “explodes off the
stage with the unrelenting impact of a flamethrower.” He shifted gears after intermission, however,
when “what had looked like a masterpiece goes flat and stays that way.” Having “tried to cram two different but
related shows onto the same stage,” Teachout asserted, Wolfe’s “problem is that
the first act . . . is so viscerally entertaining that you can’t help but feel
disappointed when the dancing stops and the talking starts.” The review-writer felt that “the entire
second half feels like an epilogue, an hour-long dying fall, and by the time
it’s over, the sense of letdown is palpable throughout the theater.” In Teachout’s estimation, “The fault lies in
Mr. Wolfe’s understandable desire to tell the story of ‘Shuffle Along,’” which
“has led him to stuff us up with too much information.” Despite this
drawback, the Wall Streeter insisted,
the show has “countless excellences,” especially Glover’s “tap-driven choreography.” Shuffle
Along: The Making’s “a pure ensemble show, so none of the performances
stands out from the whole, but all of them are comprehensively satisfying.” If Wolfe “failed to weld the parts of ‘Shuffle
Along’ into a convincing whole,” nevertheless, “his directorial touch is
otherwise as sure as ever.”
In the Guardian, one
of the lowest-ranked reviews on Show-Score, Alexis Soloski described Shuffle Along: The Making as “sometimes
inspired and sometimes listless” with some scenes “dramatic, some didactic.” Shuffle
Along: The Making “comes to seem as much a lecture-demonstration as a
drama.”:
Wolfe’s script dispenses with
Miller and Lyle’s contribution almost entirely. (As the book relies on caricature, blackface,
and elements of minstrelsy, one can see why.) This devalues the book in favor of the songs—though
Wolfe also wisely elides some of the less palatable numbers, like Uncle Tom,
Old Black Joe and Oriental Blues—and undermines the argument for the importance
of the collaboration among these four men.
Furthermore, Wolfe’s production, said Soloski, “is only
intermittently successful as art and diversion” as it’s “sometimes edifying and
sometimes entertaining, but rarely do these twin aims coincide.” The Guardian
reviewer concluded, however, that “when the feet are tapping, the fringe is
swaying and the voices of the leads and chorus are celebrating the thrill of
syncopation . . . the musical lives again.”
The New York Times’
Ben Brantley called Shuffle Along: The
Making a “tart and sweet, bubbly and flat, intoxicating and sobering
concoction” which, he said, “has been suffering from an identity crisis.” Is it “old or new?” asked Brantley,
answering, “. . . both, though not in the ways you might expect.” The “old-as-the-Rialto story line”—the tale
of “those beat-the-odds showbiz soaps,” as the Timesman put it—“is . . . what’s new,” but it’s also “what
feels stalest.” It’s the singing and
dancing, though, that “makes the reincarnated ‘Shuffle Along’ one of the
season’s essential tickets.” Unfortunately,
Shuffle Along: The Making “time-travels
with plenty of baggage, which Mr. Wolfe unpacks with pedagogical annotations
and sentimental mistiness.” Brantley
reported, “Often you sense that Mr. Wolfe has a checklist of historic points he
must, but must, cover before the show’s end.” These “Wikipedia-style
biographical summaries delivered to the audience” are “clunky, shoehorned-in
exposition,” but they don’t “overwhelm the sweeping grace of ‘Shuffle Along’
whenever it sings or dances.” The Times reviewer had great praise for all
the lead performers, though he singled out McDonald as “a one-woman time
machine de luxe,” but he added that they “all more or less manage to bend their
distinctive charismas into the sinuous contours of early Broadway jazz.” In Long Island’s Newsday, Linda Winer declared that Shuffle Along: The Making, which she “bottom-lined” as “Extraordinary,
talent-stuffed musical history,” “is not a conventional show,” adding, “Nor
should it be.” The musical’s “a bold and
wistful, playful and important musical-about-a-musical. It is overstuffed with ambition and talent,
sure, but why shouldn’t it be?” In a
show with “dual missions—education and entertainment, . . . there is a lot of
exposition, a few too many back stories and, every so often, the narrative
inertia of an illustrated history.” Then
the Newsday reviewer went on, “But
what illustrations these are—choreographed for the terrific dancing chorus by
Savion Glover.” With lavish compliments
for both the cast and the design team, Winer concluded, “It is hard to imagine
a better group than this one, finally, to tell the world about ‘Shuffle Along.’”
Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News felt that Shuffle
Along: The Making “dazzles like no other show this season—but it also
disappoints,” despite “an all-star cast and a bang-up group of hot-footed
hoofers.” Reported Dziemianowicz, “When
the cast is singing and tearing up the floor with choreographer Savion Glover’s
muscular and thrilling tap-dancing it’s pure unmitigated heaven,” but he went
on to complain that “between numbers, biographies are sketched out and
behind-the-scenes blow-by-blows are shared” which “turns entertainment into
dull lecture hall.” The Daily News review-writer explained “Stretches of hearing ‘and
then we wrote’ and ‘then we went to Baltimore’ are a drag.” With praise for the cast, especially
McDonald, Dziemianowicz ended by observing, “Even though the narration lacks
drama, the tap-happy new show gleams with ambition and topnotch talent.” In amNewYork,
Matt Windman also raised the question of whether Shuffle Along: The Making “is a new musical or a revival” and then
stated, “Whether old or new, it is a hot mess of the highest caliber—a dazzling
and dizzying documentary mixed with star turns, syncopated rhythms, stylish
attire, fierce tap-dancing and weak subplots.”
Windman described the experience as “like climbing aboard a rocket that
doesn’t stop spinning” as “‘Shuffle Along’ throws at its audience nonstop sound
and fury and historical detail.” He
complained that “the storytelling is chaotic and choppy, and the characters are
painted in broad strokes” and added that act two “comes off as superfluous.” Suggesting that “something so experimental
and ambitious needs more development,” Windman acknowledged, “Still, there’s no
denying its thrills and palpable excitement.”
Christopher Kelly of NJ Advance Media, publisher of the Newark Star-Ledger, characterizing Shuffle Along: The Making as “a kind of
Broadway version of VH1’s ‘Behind the Music,’” described it as a “proudly
flashy, impressively ambitious show.”
Kelly felt that the musical “sometimes bites off more than it can chew”
and that with six principal characters, “keeping track of their assorted
backstories and rivalries proves daunting.” While the “first act is a particularly fluid
dramatization and distillation of a tremendous amount of historical
information, presented through a series of razzle-dazzle, tap-heavy production
numbers . . ., the second act seems to meander—until the show abruptly
concludes with a ‘where are they now’-style epilogue.” The Jersey reviewer reported that Wolfe
assembles “a dream team” of a company that performs with “unadulterated joy,”
but while he “does a fine job conveying the social and cultural complexities”
of Shuffle Along, “some of the
essence of the source material is lost.”
The New York Post’s Elisabeth
Vincentelli promised that Shuffle Along:
The Making’s not “an earnest history lesson,” but “a crackling, high-energy
tribute to the joys of creating entertainment.”
The musical remake “packs in an inordinate amount of music . . . and
dance,” wrote Vincentelli. “You’re
always looking forward to what choreographer Savion Glover will come up with
next, and his set pieces here are just thrillingly fun.” The Post
reviewer reported, “The pace doesn’t flag until sometime in the second act,”
and the show ends “on a bittersweet note, though without dimming the immense
joys that preceded.”
In the New Yorker’s
“Goings On About Town” section, the reviewer, calling the production a “razzle-dazzle history lesson,”
described Shuffle Along: The Making
as “one showstopper after another” with “sumptuous costumes . . . and sets.” The New
Yorker writer noted, “Though he tries to avoid making a musicalized PBS
special, Wolfe finds much importance, but too little drama, in his
behind-the-scenes story,” though the anonymous writer found that “his
stagecraft is insurmountable.” With a “a
fine design team, and a dream cast,” wrote the Village Voice’s Elizabeth Zimmer, the “wonderful thing about Shuffle
Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed
. . . is that it’s about working, about creating jobs for
folks who couldn’t get good ones.” In
Wolfe’s production, the “talent keeps coming at you. There’s strong music and movement by a
crackerjack ensemble . . . and blizzards of Glover’s tap choreography,
historically on point and inventive.” Zimmer
was so impressed with the production’s designers that “[a]fter a few minutes I
stowed my notes and surrendered to the sensory overload,” even though “[t]here’s
not much of a book.” She noted, “The
structure is a picaresque: one crisis after another, a chronology rather than a
web of connections between people with real feelings.” Furthermore, Zimmer found, “Act II unspools
with a dying fall.”
Shuffle Along: The
Making “is explosive not simply in the auditory sense,” proclaimed Jesse
Green in New York magazine, “though
the shattering artillery onslaught of Savion Glover’s choreography may ring in
your ears . . . forever.” Act one, said
Green in one of Show-Score’s highest-rated notices, may make you “feel that
the outer show . . . is one of the best old-fashioned entertainments—tunes,
dances, comedy, costumes, the whole hotcha package—to hit Broadway in years,”
but, the man from New York explained,
Wolfe “has been preparing you from the start for Act Two: the ominous ‘All That
Followed,’” in which he “lets the story elements peter out.” Wolfe’s argument “about cultural
appropriation” that occupies act two “is theatricalized quite stunningly,”
using all the director’s “passion and accumulated know-how.” The New
York reviewer praised Shuffle Along:
The Making as “expertly staged,” and was especially impressed that it was “lit
gorgeously—often terrifyingly.” He
described act two as “a series of solo psychodramas in song,” each of which
Wolfe makes “a powerful statement of suffering.” Green continued, however, that “this is
almost too much undramatized richness, without enough context to help us
understand” and concluded that “if Act Two sometimes seems like a PowerPoint
presentation, with astonishing slides but bullet-point arguments, the show as a
whole is nevertheless revolutionary theater.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s
David Rooney declared of Shuffle Along:
The Making, “Scene after scene dazzles in one of the most electrifying
entertainments on Broadway.” Indeed, he
reported, “It's almost impossible to stay still in your seat when the
internally motorized ensemble of Shuffle Along explodes into one of
choreographer Savion Glover’s seismic tap routines, or when the thoroughbred
leads wrap their velvet pipes around those syncopated jazz sounds.” Even “if the resulting historical reappraisal
is more successful at charting the creative high than the deflating hangover
that came after,” added Rooney, “the performances alone make it unmissable” despite
“Wolfe’s overstuffed shambles of a book.”
And “while the showmanship is extraordinary” and the “cast is
magnificent” (with extraordinary plaudits for McDonald), the HR reviewer continued, Shuffle Along: The Making “spreads its
focus among five principal characters, leaving it without a strong protagonist
or a unifying point of view.” As a
result, “it works better as the reanimation of a lost Broadway milestone than a
portrait of the creative team behind it,” nevertheless, “the project’s strengths far
outweigh its flaws.” Rooney lavished
praise on Glover’s “astonishing’ work and the “top-notch” visuals, but “Wolfe’s
book exacerbates that by attempting to cover too much and sacrificing focus,”
resulting in a “loss of buoyancy” as “too much of the concluding information is
imparted documentary-style.” The review-writer
concluded, “However, even if the structural limitations of Wolfe’s undertaking
are unable to support the scope of his noble intentions, it’s a genuine thrill
to watch this outrageously talented cast.”
In Time Out New York, David Cote dubbed Shuffle Along: The Making “a breathtaking piece of showmanship, featuring more talent crowding a stage than pretty much any other Broadway show,” that “is part archaeological dig, part documentary, part Afropunk collage of fact and fantasy.” The show has “outstanding design” and “miles and miles of ecstatic, syncopated genius, courtesy of Savion Glover.” The cast, said the man from TONY, is “incandescent” and Wolfe’s staging is “a constant flow of miracles,” but while the “first half is sensational; the second is difficult,” though “there’s an abundance of joy and style that smooth[e]s over stylistic rough edges and knotty stitching of history to myth.”
In Time Out New York, David Cote dubbed Shuffle Along: The Making “a breathtaking piece of showmanship, featuring more talent crowding a stage than pretty much any other Broadway show,” that “is part archaeological dig, part documentary, part Afropunk collage of fact and fantasy.” The show has “outstanding design” and “miles and miles of ecstatic, syncopated genius, courtesy of Savion Glover.” The cast, said the man from TONY, is “incandescent” and Wolfe’s staging is “a constant flow of miracles,” but while the “first half is sensational; the second is difficult,” though “there’s an abundance of joy and style that smooth[e]s over stylistic rough edges and knotty stitching of history to myth.”
Marilyn Stasio bluntly asserted in Variety, “‘Shuffle Along’ is to die for.” Calling Shuffle
Along: The Making a “dance-drunk show,” Stasio went on to write, “In his
zeal to illustrate the full impact of this landmark production, helmer (and
book writer) George C. Wolfe piles it on, stretching the show’s baggy structure
all out of shape. But an incoherent book
seems a small price to pay for the joy of watching Audra McDonald cut loose.” Lavishly praising the production, from the
acting, to the dancing, to the designs, to Wofle’s staging, Stasio acknowledged
that in act two, “the show is actively fighting with itself.” Wolfe, she asserted, gets caught up in “rich
material, but he really should have stopped himself from cramming it all into
this show.” In Entertainment Weekly, Caitlin Brody quipped that Shuffle Along: The Making “is a
refreshing burst of energy, no caffeine necessary.” She asserted that “the jazzy musical boasts
so much star power, at times it seems unfair to the rest of the Broadway
circuit.” Choreographer Glover’s “rhythmic
tap is the true pulse of Shuffle Along[: The Making]. The clickety-clacks heard from 30-plus dancers
at once . . . ignite every seat in the theater and quickly become the only beat
we need.” Despite its length, Brody
reported, Shuffle Along: The Making “never
feels long—it’s a dazzling production that celebrates art, dreams, and
equality.” The EW reviewer ended her notice with a telling little anecdote: “And
when the man behind me emphatically screamed out, ‘Damn!’ after the final
number, I had to nod my head and agree.”
On TheaterMania,
Zachary Stewart called Shuffle Along: The
Making “an enchanting night on old Broadway, overflowing with talent and
kept in constant motion by the brilliant choreography of Savion Glover.” Stewart described the Brechtian and
meta-theatrical elements of the production—the projected scenery and song
labels at the top of the proscenium, the actors’ acknowledgment of the
orchestra and the audience, and even the way the show begins with the sounds of
a dance rehearsal coming from behind the closed curtain—and catalogued some of
the “impressive moments from this star-studded cast,” lauding many of the
individual performers. “While the
singing and acting is top-notch,” insisted Stewart; however, “it’s the dancing
that really wows” as “Glover exceeds all expectations with his heart-pounding
and scrupulously constructed choreography.”
Calling the production “exuberantly directed” and “brilliantly
choreographed,” with “a large, to-die-for top to bottom cast,” Elyse Sommer of CurtaniUp characterized Shuffle Along: The Making as “a most enjoyable,
invigorating new look at a savory and worth thinking about slice of musical
history.” The first act “is a
sensationally entertaining homage” with “so many riches that it’s easy to
forgive its somewhat disappointing execution of the . . . second act” with its
“lecture-like format.”
On Deadline, Jeremy
Gerard made an astonishing declaration: “Shuffle Along, or The Making .
. . is an angry musical, its solid outrage sublimating not into
bitterness or brutality but instead into a kind of suffusing sorrow over the
cultural loss that is as fundamental to the legacy of racism as its more
violent aspects.” Gerard
characterized Wolfe as “a writer and director blessed with the sharpest mind,
the quickest wit, the wildest imagination and the fastest mouth in town”—and
then he added one more “ingredient”: “I don’t know any other artist of Wolfe’s
stature who has channeled rage into so brilliant and identifiable a catalogue
raisonné.” Out of these characteristics,
Gerard considered that Shuffle Along: The
Making arose. But the cyber reviewer
complained that the show,
while “unquestionably entertaining,” “never resolves into a story. Instead, it’s a series of historical scenes
that tell, rather than show, and that’s deadly for a musical.” Furthermore, while the physical production “has
the confident, polished look of a no-expense-spared endeavor,” the Deadliner found that the show “struck me
as both rough and unfinished. It falls
or flies on its kinetic energy, but the tap dancing is muddy,” for which he
faulted Glover. “More important,” Gerard
continued, “the show is conceptually flawed.”
Still, such a fan of Wolfe’s is the reviewer that “I want to see all of
his work, for all of it engages and challenges and even entertains me, even
when, in the end, it doesn’t come together.”
Michele Willens of Theatre Reviews
Limited described Shuffle Along: The
Making as “a rather original hybrid of entertainment, story telling and
history” in which act one “is pretty much pure joy from start to finish .
. . chock full of dancing, song, dazzling costumes,” but act two “sort of
loses the emotional threads and becomes more of a history lesson.” This didn’t bother Willens, she said, because
“I appreciate when dots are connected and knowing where all these folks
ended up,” but she added later, nevertheless, “You can almost feel the energy
dissipating as we get near the end.”
The “opening night of the legendary Shuffle Along . . . caused a
sensation,” Carol Rocamora reminded us on Theater
Pizzazz. “But I can’t imagine it
being as sensational as its re-imagined reincarnation.” In Rocamora’s view, “The joy of Wolfe’s Shuffle
Along lies in the fabulous song-and-dance numbers” based on the “remarkable
combination of energy and precision” of Glover’s choreography “that has
audiences jumping to their feet, cheering in exhilaration.” The show is performed by “an amazing all-star
cast” on “Santo Loquasto’s sleek, snazzy set.”
The TP reviewer ended by
saying of the play’s conclusion that she “found it especially touching.” On Broadway
World, Michael Dale declared that Wolfe’s “exhilarating” Shuffle Along: The Making “may not be perfect,
but damn, it’s brilliant.” The first
act, reported Dale, is “lightening-paced” and by the time it’s over, “[t]here's
little plot left, save for a series of disappointments.” Nonetheless, continued the BWW reviewer, “that doesn't mean the
second half is lacking in exciting moments.”
The Wrap’s Robert Hofler
remarked, “In a year of pandering, corn-pone musicals, ‘Shuffle Along’ exudes
elegance and intelligence at every turn. While it’s big in its ambitions, theatrical
thrills, and the emotions it stirs, Wolfe achieves much in very small ways.” In another of Show-Score’s high-ranked
reviews, one of two in the cyber press, Hofler continued that “whenever their
words threaten to turn into a Wikipedia entry, Wolfe the writer hands the reins
to his better half: Wolfe the director,” getting “an assist” from choreographer
Glover. “Both,” asserted the Wrapper, “have no equal on Broadway this
season.” “‘Shuffle Along’ abounds with
such moments of inspired simplicity,” advised Hofler, “and that sophistication
is reinforced by the work of veteran designers Santo Loquasto, Ann Roth, and
Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer.”
Calling Shuffle Along:
The Making an “extravagant new venture,” Matthew Murray explained on Talkin’ Broadway that it “doesn’t exist
to relive or teach the past, but rather explain its role in creating the
present we now enjoy. And it does by
blending the vocabularies of the early 20th century and 2016 into a single
dramatic language that doesn’t look, sound, or feel like anything you can see
anywhere else.” Proclaimed Murray, “This
is an evening that is packed, adventurous, and, in its own lighthearted way,
powerful, though it never loses sight of what it’s saying or where it’s going.” As for the production, the TB blogger asserted, “It’s a thrilling
kaleidoscope, both comfortable and unpredictable, that translates for us a
vernacular we no longer speak as a culture” with “electrifying” dances by
Glover that are “a heady fusion of timeless tap-hearted hoofing and the edgier,
more experimental stuff for which he’s acclaimed.” Nonetheless, the show “suffers from two big
problems. First is that we don’t see (or
hear) enough of Shuffle Along in context to judge it against our
own standards. . . . And the second act
. . . lacks the dynamic narrative thrust of the first, and struggles to
maintain the same vibrancy.” In the
other high-scoring cyber notice, Steven Suskin called Shuffle Along: The Making “a theatrical explosion” on the Huffington Post and reported that “the
standard theatrical elements—music, story, staging, dancing and design—[are
used] to propel the show in a novel and exciting manner” provided by “stellar
performances, a sterling production, and an astoundingly talented ensemble.” In
Suskin’s view, director Wolfe and choreographer Glover, “[e]ffortlessly
avoiding the familiar or cliché, . . . have come up with a fascinating,
colorfully grand entertainment.” The HP reviewer summed up with, “But among a
surfeit of riches, it is the combination of Wolfe and Glover that makes Shuffle
Along[: The Making] a
veritable explosion of theatricality, an unorthodox and vital new-style
Broadway feast.”
On WNBC television (New York’s Channel 4), Robert Kahn characterized
Shuffle Along: The Making as an “amalgam
of backstory and revival” that’s “a passion project” for Wolfe. Employing “the finest Broadway talent,” Wolfe’s
production “is stylized to evoke an era and focus on big scenes, which can
become burdened with exposition,” pushing “individual personalities into the
background, which keeps us from getting to know better the ensemble players.” Despite “elaborate tap sequences” brought to
life by Glover, lamented Kahn, the show “is moving, in fits and starts.” Despite “a large ensemble which dances and
sings with precision and joy,” WNYC radio’s Jennifer Vanasco complained of Shuffle Along: The Making that “after an
exuberant, thrilling first act, the weight of all that history drags down the
second.” Characterizing the show as “one
long coda—a ‘whatever happened to . . .’ narrative,” Vanasco found that “Wolfe
invests so little time in the dreams and motivations and backstories of his
characters in the first act that we don’t feel emotionally tied to them in
the second,” which, she reported, “is something to endure, instead of something
to enjoy”—though the “first act is really astonishing.” Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press described
Shuffle Along: The Making as “a
genre-jumping show, something not comfortable in one box. It’s not a rev[ue] or revival,” Kennedy
thought. “It’s more like a history
lesson that will blow you away.” He
reported, “There is a bit of bloat, too much exposition . . . but Wolfe nicely
captures the timeless craziness of creation and the glory days of a special
show.”
[On 10 May, Audra McDonald announced
that she’s pregnant and would leave Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical
Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed
on 24 July for maternity leave. (The
show’s producers also announced that Savion Glover, Shuffle Along: The
Making’s choreographer, would be joining
the cast on that date.) On 23 June,
however, the producers of the remake of the 1921 musical-theater sensation
announced that the production can’t continue without McDonald (though a
replacement, Grammy Award-winning singer and musician Rhiannon Giddens, had
been named and had started rehearsing) and consequently that the show would
close on 24 July, the date the cast changes were scheduled to happen. In a written statement, Scott Rudin, the
show’s lead producer, explained, “Audra McDonald is the biggest star on
Broadway, and audiences have been clamoring to see her in this role since the
first preview of ‘Shuffle Along’ in March of this year.” He added that “the need for Audra to take a
prolonged and unexpected hiatus from the show has determined the unfortunate
inevitability of our running at a loss for significantly longer than the show
can responsibly absorb . . . .”
According to a further statement, ticket sales, which had been running
in excess of $1 million a week, have already dropped off severely for dates
following McDonald’s announced departure.
When the $12-million Shuffle Along: The Making closes, it will have played 100 regular performances and 38 previews.]
