Image Credit: Joan Marcus Glee
Dressed in a sequined full-length gown in black and white, Riley displayed no signs of nerves in her opening-night performance, one of only seven in the limited-run Encores! series at New York City Center. But the production, conceived by Jack Viertel with music direction by Marsalis, is truly an ensemble effort — with many competing claims for the title of show-stopper.
Tony-winner Adriane Lenox (Doubt) brings a sassy command to Sippie Wallace’s “Women Be Wise,” while Carmen Ruby Floyd initiates an ethereally operatic call-and-response with the orchestra on Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Call.” And toward the end of the 90-minute show, Jared Grimes astonishes with a tap-tastic solo to Duke Ellington’s “Tap Mathematician” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing.”
Tony-nominee Joshua Henry (last seen in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess) serves as a kind of m.c., popping up with lines from Langston Hughes about the charms of Harlem after midnight and singing tunes like “I’ve Got the World on a String”– which director-choreographer Warren Carlyle stages with a delightful routine featuring five couples dancing with red helium-filled balloons. (All of the dancing is first-rate, and performed in styles as varied as the music on the program.) But the real stars of Cotton Club Parade are the members of Marsalis’ orchestra, who make period jazz and blues standards spring to buoyant and joyful new life.
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