BLACK MUSIC
BY DEBORAH JOWITT
The Village Voice
December 15 – 21, 1999
A lone guy
comes onstage, singing and plucking a ukulele. Your mind starts humming. This is the
verse; what's the chorus it's simmering up to? Suddenly—bam!—the lights blaze
and an art deco bandstand designed by Thomas Lynch rolls forward, swarming with musicians
dressed for a sweaty, 1940s night of music. Casey MacGill rejoins his band, Gotham City
Gates, as Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" rocks
the house. The audience about dies of pleasure.
The opening
moments of Swing! tell you all you need to understand. This big-hearted,
irresistible show, unlike Susan Stroman's Contact, makes no propositions about the
redeeming power of dancing. It's too busy showing you feet playing hardball with the beat
and women vaulting onto their partners and getting slung between their legs. Rhythm
stars—greasing the gears of love and friendship, liberating the shy, heartening the
doughboys at the USO.
Paul Kelly,
who's credited with the concept, choreographer-director Lynn Taylor-Corbett, and
production supervisor Jerry Zaks have turned a string of mostly great songs, new and
classic, into a scenic journey through an optimistic world. Relationships and themes,
reprised or skimmed past as background echoes, stitch things together. Clichés acquire a
new polish. The sweet, uptight young soprano (wonderful Laura Benanti), finally schooled
to snap her fingers on the 2 and the 4, yanks on her Alice-blue gown by William Ivey Long,
and it flips down to reveal her costumed as a degree candidate in jazz sirendom. The
partner receiving her scathing "Cry Me a River" is trombonist Steve Armour, who
sweet-plays himself back into her heart. In the Ellington-Sid Kuller "Bli-Blip,"
Everett Bradley and Ann Hampton Callaway strike up a friendship through a witty scat
dialogue—the rich, taunting cream of their voices telling you how well matched they
are. Callaway delivers—marvelously—some of the evening's greatest songs:
"I'll Be Seeing You," "Blues in the Night," "Stompin' at the
Savoy." And Bradley, a big joyous man, lights up the stage every time he comes on.
Through it
all wind the dancers: the rabid little lindyer (Geralyn Del Corso) who gradually wears
down the "won't dance" codger (Keith Lamelle Thomas), the chubby loser (Robert
Royston) who blossoms in "Boogie Woogie Country" into a cowboy-hatted pro,
twirling Laureen Baldovi like a lariat. The partners, including pair dancers who
contribute their own choreography, are all terrific. I especially enjoyed Ryan Francois
with spunky Jenny Thomas; Francois looks as if his joints are coming close to melting down
inside his loose suit, but he's never too mellow to nail that tickling beat.
