A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

Studio 54, NYC, November 10, 2024

Reviewed by Chip Deffaa

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical gives Broadway a much-needed shot in the arm. There was much to savor here, from the music to the dancing to the scenery and the lighting. Even before setting foot in Studio 54, I was smiling because the producers had a band in front of the theater playing New Orleans-style jazz to welcome us.

The show’s sheer vitality was irresistible, and James Monroe Iglehart—perhaps best known for his Tony Award-winning role as the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin—vividly brought Armstrong to life. He captured Armstrong’s essence without caricaturing him; that’s no small feat. It was a very human and very memorable performance. I’m so glad I saw him. (An alternate, James T. Lane, will play the role of Armstrong on Mondays and Wednesdays.) There were fine contributions from supporting players Dewitt Fleming Jr., Jimmy Samagula, Gavin Gregory, Dionne Figgins, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Kim Exum, and Darlesia Cearcy.

The score, drawn from songs associated with Armstrong and arranged and orchestrated with panache by Branford Marsalis, included such great numbers as “Basin Street Blues”; “It’s Tight Like That”; “Dinah”; “Hello, Dolly!”; and “What a Wonderful World.” Daryl G. Ivey led the band that featured Alphonso Horne and Bruce Harris on trumpets; it was a treat to hear.

The show opened with a dazzling rendition of Armstrong’s trumpet-solo introduction on his recording of “West End Blues”—one of the most celebrated passages in jazz history. It gave the show an electrifying start. (I wish they had performed the whole number, not just that opening cadenza; Armstrong’s wordless vocal on the original 1928Okeh recording is as soulful as any vocal in jazz history.)

Some musical numbers were positioned brilliantly in the show to have maximum impact, including “I’ll be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You” (which Armstrong cheerfully and slyly dedicated to some racist Southern cops), “Up a Lazy River” (the sentimentality of the song was juxtaposed with a lynching), “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?” (which Armstrong always performed to devastating effect, and which Iglehart really nailed).

This show, like most, had its share of flaws. There were significant historical inaccuracies and omissions that bothered me, and I’ll touch on some of those in a bit. But the show’s strengths far outweighed the weaknesses. It captured well many key moments in Armstrong’s life, and I liked the way it mixed darker moments with lighter ones. I hope the show, which held me from beginning to end, enjoys a long run. The audience, at the critics’ preview performance that I attended, responded enthusiastically.

Aurin Squire, who wrote the libretto, has a terrific ear for dialogue. (I’m looking forward to seeing see more of his work.) The dialogue in the show’s best scenes crackled with life. Here’s a taste. Armstrong, having moved from his home town of New Orleans to Chicago, is telling someone how much he misses the women of New Orleans. Asked if they’re soft and delicate, Armstrong answers: “No, they’ll poison your tea, stab you in the back, and steal a lock of hair to put a voodoo hex on you… but they’re ladies about it.” He misses, too, he says, the “sweet ‘n’ smoky, chicory swamp smell” of his hometown. When he’s told that New Orleans had “poverty, mosquitoes, and crocodiles,” he responded simply: “Alligators. We ain’t have no crocodiles.” That was wonderfully evocative, and wonderfully rhythmic dialogue.

Much of the dialogue seemed just right; it was natural and conversational, and it perfectly fit the characters speaking the lines. The occasional awkward, overly didactic moments stood out as if they’d been grafted onto the script by another writer. Here’s an example. Pianist Lil Hardin, Armstrong’s second wife, is seen as pushing her husband to make more of himself. But she’s not just pushing him. Speaking of herself, she tells him: “I AM the greatest. But no one wants to hear that. When I say you’re the greatest, people won’t laugh. Hell, people want to believe in you. So, if I can’t make it, at least I can help you get there.” That didn’t sound like a real conversation between a woman and her husband. It’s preachy; it sounded like a speech to the audience in which a character wanted to publicly announce her motivation, and the author of the lines wanted to send a message that sexism can hold women back. But it just did not ring true to me to have Hardin say to her husband, “If I can’t make it, at least I can help you….”

The author didn’t just depict Lil Hardin as a helping Armstrong, but as making artistic decisions for him, controlling him. That definitely did not ring true. The script has her telling him, in 1923, to quit King Joe Oliver’s big band to go on the road with a five-piece band of his own. Why a five-piece band? She says: “We go smaller. Easier to travel on the road. King Joe has got so many musicians he spends half his time managing them. Five people.” Armstrong protests: “Five people?!? You can’t play New Orleans jazz with five people.” She insists: “Five people, and we already got two in the band: you and me. So we only need three more.” She’s calling the shots. The show would have us believe that Armstrong does exactly as she orders. The problem with this scene—which emasculates Louis Armstrong—is that it never happened. He didn’t leave King Oliver to go on the road with a small group following instructions from Hardin. When he left King Oliver, he performed in public for the next two dozen years almost exclusively with big bands. When he finally did take his own big band on the road, it did not include Hardin.

Armstrong didn’t begin touring with small groups (and then only due to economic necessity) until the late 1940s, many years after he divorced Lil. In the 1920s, he made some celebrated small-group recordings—his “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” sessions—but those were recording bands, not his working bands; their small size was dictated in part by how much record companies were then willing to pay. The part about Hardin encouraging her husband to leave King Oliver to become a star in his own right was true; but the suggestion that she decided what type of band he should have was absurd. All biographical shows take some artistic liberties, and I’m fine with that so long as they serve some greater purpose and illuminate some larger truths. But that scene was historically inaccurate and it made Armstrong seem weak; it’s hard to justify.

As for the music in the show, there was much to love, but there were some missteps, too. For example, Armstrong followed his mentor and idol, King Oliver from New Orleans to Chicago to join his band. That was an important moment in jazz history. Armstrong first began to make a name for himself when he joined Oliver in Chicago in 1923, and in that year he recorded classic Oliver compositions such as “Canal Street Blues,” “Chimes Blues,” and “Dippermouth Blues” (named in honor of Armstrong). It would have been logical to have King Oliver playing one of his own famed compositions in this scene. But for some wholly inexplicable reason, they have Oliver—in 1923—instead playing one of Duke Ellington’s signature compositions, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If Ain’t Got that Swing” (written in 1932). That made no sense. Ellington was an unknown in 1923, while Oliver was at his peak. Why not have an Oliver number here? The show then compounded the error by having Armstrong tell Oliver, admiringly: “Man, I ain’t never heard music like that.” He’s depicted as being almost in awe of what Oliver is playing. Armstrong may have started, in effect, as a student of Oliver’s, but he soon eclipsed his teacher.

A Wonderful World did not make clear Armstrong’s tremendous importance as an artist. He was the first major soloist in jazz history. No musician in jazz history ever exerted a greater influence than Armstrong. (As one of his sideman put it, as quoted in one of my jazz books, “Armstrong was the fountainhead.”) The musical concepts he developed in the 1920s and early ’30s influenced countless musicians; everybody began trying to swing music the way he did. As both an instrumentalist and a vocalist, he profoundly influenced the direction that music took. Ellington’s composition “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got that Swing” was built upon the musical foundation Armstrong laid down; it would not have existed without Armstrong.

I don’t expect a terrific playwright like Squire, to necessarily be an expert in jazz history. Nor do I expect that of this show’s director, Christopher Renshaw; co-directors James Monroe Iglehart and Christina Sajous; or dramaturg Faye Price. Nor do I expect it of choreographer Rickey Tripp, associate choreographer Aurelia Michael, or tap choreographer Dewitt Fleming Jr., all of whom did excellent work. They’ve created an entertaining, informative show that anyone could enjoy, and it’s warmly recommended. But the show would be stronger and truer to history if some of its flaws could be addressed. I hope the show will have a great future life—in New York, on tour, and regionally. This could be the basis for a great film musical too, and Lord knows, Armstrong is deserving of one. Adding an expert on Armstrong and jazz history to the mix could make a good show even greater.