Jan. 17--In 1922, Louis Armstrong rode the train of talent up from New Orleans to Chicago, hoping to give up his Crescent City day job and blow his horn full time in the wind.
Armstrong married the pianist in Joe "King" Oliver's band, settled at 421 E. 44th St., and proceeded to light up Bronzeville rooms like the Sunset Cafe, the Savoy Ballroom and, of course, the Dreamland Cafe. From there, his white manager, Joe Glaser, backed by some boys in Chicago, made sure the whole world knew Armstrong's name. When "Satchmo" died in 1971, President Richard M. Nixon issued an evocative statement of sorrow. The existence and force of that eulogy is telling: It notes Armstrong's talent and fame, but also that he was labeled a friend in the famously unforgiving Nixon filing cabinet.
How could the man who recorded "Hello, Dolly!" and "What a Wonderful World" be perceived as a threat?
The pragmatic side of Armstrong, a man whose fame reached across at least four decades of turbulence, is at the core of Terry Teachout's "Satchmo at the Waldorf," an intriguing, forthright and intellectually savvy piece (recently off-Broadway) that opened Saturday night at the Court Theatre and that deviates from the traditional theatrical biography of the African-American artist in some interesting ways -- just as Teachout, also the theater critic for The Wall Street Journal, often has a different line of thinking from his competitors.
"Satchmo" is a solo show. At Court Theatre, Louis Armstrong is played by Barry Shabaka Henley, a very fine actor who was not entirely ready on opening night but who, crucially, comes both with skin clearly in the game and with a vocal instrument that sounds distinct notes in harmony with themselves, which very much evokes Armstrong's signature sound.
Teachout's piece requires this one actor also to play Miles Davis, who appears as a character in Armstrong's autobiographical narrative and who functions here as a kind of un-Louis, a more radical formalist and critical thinker who was critical of Armstrong's populism and his interest in playing to white audiences, sometimes even in segregated rooms. Not Nixon's type, you might say. And then there are a few appearances by Glaser, a man who believed in treating his talent well but also running them like sled dogs (300 nights a year!), and who never invited Armstrong to his home despite all the money his talent made him.
The premise of the show -- which you have to buy into, of course -- is that Armstrong is preparing an autobiography in his dressing room at the Waldorf (not exactly the Cotton Club) and thus looking back on his life, and on his compromises and more expedient choices. The argument he makes for himself is, I think, Teachout's central thesis -- that Armstrong usually chose a gig over a protest and was plenty willing to record songs that his white audience wanted to hear ("Hello, Dolly!" being exhibit A), but all of that allowed him to serve as a figure of unity and a dispenser of happiness to folks of all stripes. Not a bad way to live your life, you might say, even if the world burned around you. Especially since Armstrong could often do good when he threw his nonthreatening name behind a cause.
More interested in Armstrong's place in cultural history than, say, how he made his music (if you expect too much of the latter, you'll be disappointed), Teachout's 90-minute play is, in essence, an eloquent defense of a brilliant, unifying jazz populist whose willingness to record nonjazz material helped him get to the top of the charts -- famously pushing back the Beatles -- thus growing the jazz audience. Still, Teachout is also smart enough to show us the price the man paid, especially when, near the end, he realized how hard he had been run. And used. And by which point he had figured out that "Hello, Dolly!" was a pretty dumb song all along.
Being in Hyde Park, the Court Theatre is, of course, just a couple of miles from the old Armstrong residence (although, in Chicago, 2 miles can seem as wide as a desert). There is definitely a localized feeling to this production (Sidney Korshak, the famous mob fixer and lawyer from Chicago, also has a climactic role in the plot). Perhaps since New York is less interesting to Chicago-based Armstrong fans than 44th Street, director Charles Newell, and designers John Culbert, Keith Parham and Nan Cibula-Jenkins eschew any and all Waldorf realism and stick Armstrong on a floating platform surrounded by mirrors, evocative of a dark night of the musician's soul, you might say. Or judgment day. Newell likes sticking characters in purgatory.
At times I found myself wishing that Teachout had collaborated with this team in the first place -- and thus expanded and intensified those deeper, Faustian themes and questions of the play, which are the most interesting. (I should note that Henley does not actually play the trumpet, which the show does not require, although Andre Pluess includes some of Armstrong's music in his sound design.)
I'd give Henley another few shows before you go, by which point I suspect he'll be blisteringly good.
At one point in the show, Henley's Armstrong talks about how white audiences stayed with him, even as most African-American jazz aficionados had moved on to other artists with more progressive forms. To make his point, he surveys the audience and smiles knowingly. On Saturday night, the clever metadramatic trick worked beautifully, aptly, sadly.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
3 STARS
When: Through Feb. 7
Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $45-$65 at 773-753-4472 or courttheatre.org
