In full swing

Blackbirds of Broadway shuffles into Foothills

by Steve Vineberg

BLACKBIRDS OF BROADWAY. Conceived by David Coffman. Directed and choreographed by Marion J. Caffey. Musical direction by Charles M. Vassallo. Set designed by Janie E. Fliegel. Costumes by Jeff Fender. Lighting by Annmarie Duggan. With H. Clent Bowers, Larry Hines, Andi Hopkins, Tracey Lee, Kimberley Michaels, Dennis Stowe, and Eyan Williams. At Worcester Foothills Theatre, through April 27.

The black musical revue made its debut in 1921 with the premiere of Shuffle Along, which had songs by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. It was a phenomenon of the '20s, where it existed alongside the Harlem Renaissance, and of the '30s; by wartime, it had been subsumed, like almost all revues, by book shows. (Black musicals were woefully infrequent over the next couple of decades, but there were a few, like Cabin in the Sky, St. Louis Woman, and Jamaica.) The era of the black revues unveiled so much talent that it's become legendary: if you traveled uptown to Harlem to visit the Cotton Club or midtown to Lew Leslie's nightclub, Les Ambassadeurs, for a glimpse of one of his Blackbirds shows, you got to see performers such as Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Adelaide Hall, Florence Mills, and Louis Armstrong.

The Blackbirds revues -- the inspiration behind David Coffman and Marion J. Caffey's exuberant production Blackbirds of Broadway, which closes the season at Foothills Theatre -- were the brainchild of Leslie, a white producer, who was already well known for assembling 1922's Plantation Revue. The earliest edition of Blackbirds was in 1926, but it was Blackbirds of 1928 that made the series famous. Its Dorothy Fields-Jimmy McHugh songs included "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson danced the -- from all accounts -- showstopping eleven-o'clock number. (In 1968 Columbia put out a collection of songs from the show, remastered from period recordings by black artists, including some of the original stars. I've never seen it on CD, but if you run across it in a second-hand record store, grab it -- it's a treasure.)

Blackbirds of Broadway gathers together songs from all the Blackbirds revues (there were later editions in 1930, 1932, 1933 and 1939), Plantation Revue, the Cotton Club shows, and elsewhere. This is a rousing collection that includes "Papa De Da Da," "My Handy Man," the indispensable "Stormy Weather," "Bye Bye Blackbird," and two personal favorites that aren't heard often enough, "Memories of You" and "Until the Real Thing Comes Along." (Charles M. Vassalo does yeoman service as musical director.) You can enjoy the show for its music alone, or just for Jeff Fender's imaginative, evocative costumes. But the focus of the evening is, appropriately, on the seven performers: Larry Hines, Andi Hopkins, Tracey Lee, torch singer Kimberley Michaels, Dennis Stowe, Eyan Williams, and the sensationally charismatic H. Clent Bowers, whose bogus role as "The Conjure Man" -- a kind of supernatural M.C. acting as a spirit medium for the voices of the Blackbirds -- enables him to act as the show's galvanizing force. At the press opening, where the incredibly hard-working cast seemed a little tense at first, it was Bowers's appearance in a black zoot suit with crimson lining to sing Cab Calloway's signature tune, "Minnie the Moocher," that smoothed out all the show's wrinkles. (I assume that by this point in the run the first act is as relaxed as the second.)

The show has seven strong singers, six of whom also dance superbly, so there are a lot of highlights. I'd single out (besides everything Bowers does) Eyan Williams's sinuous dance solo to "East St. Louis Toodle Oo," Dennis Stowe's tap number, and the second-act opening, where Stowe makes a memorable entrance in a white zoot suit as "The Man from Harlem." There are plenty of others: Andi Hopkins's rendition of "Dinah," where she's assisted by Stowe and Larry Hines; Tracey Lee's unexpected interpolation of a spiritual, "Elijah Rock"; and, among the many ballads Kimberley Michaels handles skillfully, "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good." The show is overambitious: Coffman, who conceived it, works in occasional snippets of Langston Hughes's poetry, as if he thought it necessary to put the seal of high art on the careers of the brilliant black performers to whom Blackbirds of Broadway pays tribute. (The poetry feels like an intrusion, and the tonal shifts are awkward.) It isn't. George C. Wolfe's recent musicals, Jelly's Last Jam and Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, preach that African-American artists who entertained white audiences were black-face panderers. A show like Blackbirds of Broadway reminds us of their true stature.