Shuffle Along at the Music Box Theatre
The great genius of Savion Glover, who choreographed the new(ish) musical Shuffle Along at the Music Box, as a tap choreographer is that he never has felt the pressure, emanating from I know not whence, to eternally organize his dancers into razor-sharp horizontal lines planted on the stage like a middle school graduation. Instead, his formations collapse and expand like Hoberman spheres, supplanting and frequently overshadowing the words and music, to the point that two of the most memorable numbers in Shuffle Along don’t bother playing any at all. The first act has such a weightlessness and effervescence that it’s almost a shock that this musical becomes a dramatically vital juggernaut midway through the second. Dance while you can, boys and girls. Reality’s coming.
Glover, of course, has had a twenty-year relationship with the librettist/director of this production, the prolific George C. Wolfe, who uses this backstage account of the 1921 title show, the “first Broadway musical with a jazz score,” mostly to prove once and for all that he is better at directing musicals than you are. The show is seamless, not because it is fully assured but because its assurance sneaks up on you, taking what seem to be caricatures of mostly-forgotten figures in black theater history -- F.E. Miller (Brian Stokes Mitchell), Aubrey Lyles (Billy Porter), Noble Sissle (Joshua Henry), Eubie Blake (Brandon Victor Dixon), and Lottie Gee (Audra McDonald) -- and imbuing them with empathy, in a sort of anti-Hamilton in which the subjects come to terms with the heartbreaking reality that history will leave them behind.
(L-R: Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Joshua Henry, and Brandon Victor Dixon in Shuffle Along.)
The great genius of Savion Glover, who choreographed the new(ish) musical Shuffle Along at the Music Box, as a tap choreographer is that he never has felt the pressure, emanating from I know not whence, to eternally organize his dancers into razor-sharp horizontal lines planted on the stage like a middle school graduation. Instead, his formations collapse and expand like Hoberman spheres, supplanting and frequently overshadowing the words and music, to the point that two of the most memorable numbers in Shuffle Along don’t bother playing any at all. The first act has such a weightlessness and effervescence that it’s almost a shock that this musical becomes a dramatically vital juggernaut midway through the second. Dance while you can, boys and girls. Reality’s coming.
Hamilton, of course, Shuffle Along’s chief competition for the Best Musical Tony, was the catalyst for Shuffle Along lead producer Scott Rudin’s attempt to switch the show into the Revival category, which is, expectedly, ridiculous -- this version has an entirely different book and is actually about the very musical of which it was claiming to be a revival (equivalent to Kiss Me Kate purporting to be a revival of The Taming of the Shrew). The truth is that it’s unlikely Shuffle Along will give Hamilton a run for its considerable money. It’s great, but not that great, and it’s steeped in tradition rather than ushering in revolution, which seems to be the word of the day.
But that’s a shame, because everyone involved is so at the top of their respective games that it’s tempting to imagine it opening any other season. Audra McDonald, the headline attraction, who was sick through most of previews and leaves the show for three months starting in June, is, as usual, the soprano personified. That anyone is able to exude pathos while tap-dancing in heels would come as a surprise to any audience member unfamiliar with her increasingly legendary career. Billy Porter (late of Kinky Boots) remains shockingly charismatic with a penetrating voice to match. And Brooks Ashmankas, playing all the white parts in the show with a villainous glee, manages not to be upstaged by one of the most talented African-American casts assembled on a Broadway stage in recent memory.
Playing downtown theater patron Carl Van Vechten in the final scene, Ashmankas rasps, in the most hauntingly memorable new lyric in the show, “They won’t remember Shuffle Along and they won’t remember you,” drowning out original librettist Miller as he frustratedly attempts to defend his groundbreaking musical. What sticks with you after the second act, surprisingly, isn’t that golden choreography but the image of Porter, Mitchell, McDonald, Dixon, and Henry standing stiffly at the center of the stage, surrounded by their detractors, holding back tears as they proverbially fade away into the little-explored annals of black theater history. There is a pride and a dignity in this show that suggests it does, in fact, belong in this season after all.
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