The musical revue, “Ain’t Misbehavin’ “ is now open at Albany’s amphitheater in Washington Park. It’s a show that features five hard-working performers singing a lot of familiar songs. The talent of the performers and the energy within the music makes it difficult not to enjoy the work.
Each performer has a couple of standout songs and the ensemble numbers add a sense of vibrancy to the evening. It’s a challenge to stay in your seat during the closing numbers of the first act where the cast is singing and dancing their hearts out to “Cash for Your Trash,” “Off-Time” and the “Joint is Jumpin’”.
Indeed, just listening to the great five-piece band with music director Brian Axford at the piano makes it a night to be enjoyed.
However, for every great exciting number – of which there are many – too often there are periods where a song seems to exist only to fill the 2 ½ hour length of a show that was the norm when the show opened in 1978. Today a swift 90-minute offering would probably be more satisfying to modern audiences.
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” is subtitled “The Fats Waller Musical Show.” It features songs the composer created for nightclubs in the 1930s and 40s. It also uses songs for which Waller is associated with as a performer. For instance, “Two Sleepy People” was written by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics by Frank Loesser.
However, who wrote what is mostly irrelevant. “Mean to Me” was written by Brett Eldridge, but when Dashira Cortes sings the song she takes total ownership of the heartbreaking tune.
The same is true of the other women in the show. Mariah Lyttle knocks you out with her rendition of “I’ve Got a Feelin’ I’m Falling” and Joyel Kaleel not only impresses with her singing in “The Ladies Who Sing With the Band,” her dance moves are sensational in every number in which she appears.
The women are as adorable as they are talented. It’s an asset that places the two men in the cast, Branden Jones and Hayes Fields, at a disadvantage. Each man is talented, but seldom loveable. They offer a seedy, bad-boy charm in several duets, but rarely are they endearing.
Jones does have comic turn as the drug-induced singer in “Viper Drag,” and Fields shines in leading the “Honeysuckle Rose” number. However, Fields also had the chore of trying to distract the audience from the uncomfortable lyrics of “Your Feets Too Big,” which are blatantly misogynistic. He and Jones are saddled with the distasteful insults riddled throughout “Fat and Greasy.” Actually, they succeeded as both songs were met with hearty laughter from the audience instead of groans of indignation.
Taken a number at a time, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” entertains. But, lacking in the production is a sense of unity. The show is more like a concert than it is a revue. A performer sings either a solo or duet and exits or retreats to a cocktail table on the far reaches of the stage. The multi-person numbers have a tendency to be offered in groupings of straight lines.
Even though the performers inject their own personalities in the songs, there is no feeling the group is at a common place for a common purpose. The actors engage with each other as performers, but missing is the suggestion that they are kindred spirits.
Waller established his reputation as a man who gained fame in the fashionable white-populated mid-town New York City lounges. After the shows, he played his music uptown in Harlem and became a more authentic musician and person. This feeling of being part of an intimate underground is lacking in the large open space of Washington Park.
Except for a stunning and emotional rendering of “Black and Blue,” which defines the hurt and pain of the Black population in a racist society, no other number has the same effect. Director Jean-Remy Monnay, who is a local leader within the theater community for telling neglected stories about social oppression, rarely finds the key to make “Ain’t Misbehavin’” function as a reminder of an era in which Black performers were expected to entertain and then disappear.
Perhaps it’s my white guilt, and high expectations, but leaving a show where five actors of color performed works by a Black composer who created music under racist conditions nearly a century ago, I wanted to think more about race in today’s society. But, perhaps it’s too much to ask from a show designed merely to entertain.
However, I did leave humming the music of Fats Waller, and that’s not a bad thing on a summer night.
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” plays at Albany’s Washington Park Tuesdays through Saturday until July 24. Bleacher seats are free on a first come first serve basis. Reserved ground level seats are for sale at 518-434-0776
Bob Goepfert is theater reviewer for the Troy Record.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
