Of the many dazzling qualities distinguishing Savion Glover and Tony Goldwyn’s staging of the sassy jazz musical Chez Joey at Arena, let’s speak first of Awa Sal Secka. The D.C. theater audience is lucky to have her, and the award-winning actress finds a fine showcase for her sublime voice and performance chops as the show’s steel magnolia, Linda English.
The names remain the same in this feisty re-imagining of the 1940 Rodgers & Hart hit Pal Joey, where songbird Linda, fresh to Chicago from South Carolina, lands herself in a love triangle with smooth-talking club entertainer Joey Evans (Myles Frost), who also romances his rich benefactress Vera Simpson (Samantha Massell).
Frost, a 2022 Tony-winner for Best Actor in a Musical for his thrilling portrayal of Michael Jackson in MJ, brings his own dazzling talents to a role originated on Broadway by Gene Kelly, and famously played in the 1957 film by Frank Sinatra. Frost’s irrepressible Joey, a flirtatious charmer, moves to a jazz beat, largely defined by the production’s innovating co-director, choreographer, and “orchestrologist” Glover.
Having clearly taken great pains to orchestrate his cast’s every tap, step, and stomp to employ as musical percussion, Glover still sets the whole ensemble free to dance with assured abandon. We’re in a jazz club, after all, Lucille’s, in Chicago’s historic Black neighborhood of Bronzeville.
Lucille (Angela Hall, fabulous) and her club might still be recovering from the Great Depression, but hope is in the air, and no one’s more hopeful for the future than Joey. And nobody’s dancing freer on that stage than Frost, whose show-stopping performance of “Where or When,” leaping from tabletops to piano top, radiates hope and exuberance.
Joey has a dark side, too, explored vividly, if ponderously, in a second-act interlude of modern dance and tap interpreting the bad boy’s blues. His pain and inner torment are probably better handled in the show’s snappy new book by Richard LaGravenese.
Retaining a certain ’40s wholesomeness, the script shapes these characters as grown-ass adults, particularly in the portrayal of Joey and Vera’s transactional relationship. One wishes, however, in the plotting or the performance by Massell, that Vera pulled more weight in the tug-of-war over Joey’s heart, but Linda has almost all the pull in that department.
Also, thanks to costume designer Emilio Sosa, when the songbird has to show up in a drop-dead fuck-you dress, she and the dress deliver. A wardrobe for the entire cast that looks this sexy and period-appropriate, and moves this well, is not to be taken for granted.
Neither are the adventurous arrangements of the familiar score, designed to reflect the new jazz sound that animates Joey’s dreams (jazz musician and composer Victor Gould serves as music supervisor). The tight onstage band, led by pianist Lafayette Harris, Jr., caresses every line and syncopation in an improvisational, bebop style that has some of the folks at Lucille’s begging for more melody.
Anticipating that this show’s hep sound might seem too adventurous for some, Chez Joey supplies a balance of free-wheeling jazz and lush, old-school standards. If you want “My Funny Valentine” served straight-up, they’ve got you. If you’d like “My Heart Stood Still” with a twist, they’ve got you, too. Secka’s Linda English can, of course, sing it all, and does splendidly, and even throws in a delightfully bubble-voiced radio jingle for good measure.
Chez Joey (★★★★☆) runs through March 15 at Arena Stage, 1101 6th St. SW. Tickets are $83 to $143, with discount options available. Call 202-488-3300, or visit arenastage.org.
The great gay poet and playwright Federico García Lorca made a clear point with the title of his best-known play, The House of Bernarda Alba. Spanish matriarch Bernarda Alba rules her roost with an iron will and a firm hand. In her house, she is the law that must be obeyed by all, including her five adult daughters, all living under her roof.
Her rules likely applied just as rigidly to her second husband Antonio, very recently deceased. With his death, Bernarda only tightens her grip on the household, decreeing an eight-year mourning period, during which none of her daughters shall be allowed to marry. She seals the house in mourning, and intends to trap all her family inside with her.
Douglas Sills loves to laugh. It's a big laugh, hearty and life-affirming. And it -- along with a warm, impossibly broad smile -- blankets a conversation with him in warmth and comfort. The laugh bursts forth at unexpected moments, such as when the actor, known for stints on Broadway and as French chef (revealed to be a Kansas cook) Monsieur Baudin on HBO's The Gilded Age, is asked if he has ever been part of a play that's gone terribly wrong.
"I don't have a disaster in my head offhand," he grins. "Do I? I don't. Maybe it's because you go to work every day for months and you're pouring your heart and soul into it, you're there for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, and you're giving up everything to do it, and it's not a high-paying thing. And so you drink the Kool-Aid -- you have to. And so maybe that's why it doesn't feel like a disaster to me." He pauses. "But I've seen some disasters."
Dead men tell no tales, they say, but that might just depend on who's listening. In Angelle Whavers' dramedy John Doe, a grieving young woman, Zia (Ariana Caldwell), lends an ear to a dead man with plenty to tell, though with no memory of who he was or how he died.
So Zia calls him John Doe (Mitchell Alexander). He doesn't know his own name, yet he's certain somebody killed him. "Something or someone caused my death," he insists, in the hope Zia can help him find justice or exact revenge. But first, as the only person who can see his ghostly form, she'll have to solve the mystery of his identity and the nature of his demise.
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