Question For Those Who've Seen SHUFFLE ALONG

I do remember why I liked it. It is a good show but I can kind of see where your question is coming from.

I think I was so impressed by the talent and the choreography. What impressed me is that with that powerhouse cast, nobody "took the spotlight". It was also in the back of my mind that Wolfe was directing. I saw it on the 5th and knew going in that it was still being worked on. I think knowing that added to my enjoyment because even though I wasn't seeing the frozen show, I was possibly witnessing a great piece of theatre in progress.

Would I see it agaIn? Yes. Why? Because I did enjoynwhat I saw and would like to see the finished product. Off the top of my head I can't remember a show that has had a preview period like this one. (Playbill changes, illness, many changes to the show and a week off). Those things seemed to generate a bit of excitemet and hope that when it opens it could be an incredible piece.

Just my random thoughts.

I will also say that the evening I saw it there was something in the air. I felt like the bulk of the people there were avid theatergoers. Of course people wanted to see Audra but it felt like mostly people wanted to see the show itself. The conversations around me were about theatre. And also, as a black man, it was thrilling to see an all black cast do what they did on that stage. Also I felt like I was seeing a good old fashioned Broadway show. JMO

I do wonder if the tap dancing has anything to do with that response. The dancing is absolutely sensational, to the point that it dominates the evening. And while none of the dancing feels out of place, I think it's possible that the flash and spectacle of the choreography overshadows the importance of the story that's being told. I don't think I have quite the same response as you, Jordan, but I can see where it's coming from.

Patash, I had no problem with the story. I am actually glad we didn't get a revival of the original. I very much enjoyed getting the backstory. The two things I hoped for after seeing it was tightening up act 2 and not having the guy tap dance during the scene where they talked about the band players style being copied. (Clainetist? Someone refresh my memory) His tap dancing was very distracting and not needed, in my opinion and verged on tap overkill.

Stray thoughts on my experience, which match some of your reactions:

- The audience (April 4, a Monday) seemed like serious theatergoers. This was a contrast to my first two shows (long-running tourist favorities Wicked and Book of Mormon) or my last one (Hamilton). It was an older crowd and a little more racially diverse. But it was a very enthusiastic group, and everyone around me was in a good mood after the first act. I sensed less enthusiasm after the second act, but people still leapt to their feet and gave a standing ovation to what was clearly a work in progress.

- What stood out? A lot of the first act, especially what I call the Suitcase Dance, featuring Brian Stokes Mitchell's standout song and Savion Glover's most imaginative tap choreography. They should do it at the Tonys, but seeing it a few feet away was not an experience that can be recreated on television.

- Uh, the cast? I had never seen any of these performers in person. It was pretty cool to sit in the sixth row and watch Audra McDonald show off her acting, singing and dancing chops. And thanks, Dottie, for mentioning Brandon Victor Dixon, who more than held his own with McDonald and had his own great moments - including the one you mentioned. While I thought Billy Porter didn't quite bring off his big second act song, he is quite a comic presence, and brought down the house with one line in which he tells the audience that he had a wife. While it was a reminder of the problems with the show, I didn't think about that in the moment.

- While the show gets a bit didactic at times, and one big number (since cut, apparently) didn't work at all, there was something understated that worked for me.

- But just so I don't come off as too much of an apologist, I should note that my wife had a similar reaction to you, Jordan. Shuffle Along was her least favorite show of the four we saw, and she didn't really have much to say about it later. It didn't help that we saw Hamilton the next night. I guess I appreciated the ambition, the talent, and the chance to see a bunch of Broadway stars sweat it out to put together a show on deadline pressure. And for a work-in-progress, it was a pretty good musical.

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 02:15 AM

I was at the second preview when pretty much every single idea was thrown onstage. It was like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. Very little stuck for me, and I, honestly, remember not too many details about the show at all. I did feel the show was tedious, bloated, and trying to do too many things at once. I am curious to see the new changes (I said I would never go back, but now I am curious), but I am hesitant to pay a pretty penny to go back and see a show that I genuinely disliked the first time around.

I saw the show last week and until I started reading this thread, had not given it another thought. I think a show, for better or worse, has a better chance of sticking in your head, when it is shown, not told. This is a story that is mostly told and, for the wealth of talent on stage, it just doesn't resonate as, I think they had hoped.

It's interesting, Whizzer, that the changes you mention were almost all made in the last week or so (according to people in the previews thread). What were they doing between a month ago, when I saw it and all that was still there, and now?

(Josephine Baker was gone by the end of March when I saw it.)

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 12:57 PM

WhizzerMarvin said: "Audra was on fire, especially in act one, and the piece now feels much more like a star vehicle for her than it did before. After the first preview I felt like the four males were all co-leads and Audra had more of a featured role. The men all saw their parts reduced while Audra's seemed to be left untouched. She dominates every moment she's onstage; it's thrilling, but throws the show a little out of whack by allowing Lottie to steal so much focus."



How interesting! It's funny how it didn't even occur to me that an obvious solution to try to fix the problem of too many characters/story lines/themes would be to make their biggest star the central attraction. When I saw the show, she was still just one among many. I wonder if it makes the show cohere more? Dixon is so appealing, I'd love it if their love story was expanded--he deserves more to do than he's given.

It's not a perfect show, but it has so much going for it I hope it gets a good run. I'll certainly see it at least one more time (as long as it doesn't close early).

Whizzer,

Thanks so much for chiming in! I was curious as to what you thought of the changes that have taken place since you first saw it. I hope that George C. Wolfe continues to work on this show post opening, as there is definitely something there.

After seeing the production photos posted on this site yesterday, it appears that Audra has a lot more costumes in comparison to the one's worn by Darlesia Cercy when I saw the show last Saturday. That's the one thing that stuck out was that Darlesia was wearing the same blue dress in mostly every scene.

I also felt that Joshua Henry really didn't have much to do, and I was wondering how much was cut.

Did Darlesia originally play Josephine Baker before the role was cut?

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 02:24 PM

Someone in a Tree,

Act Two original had a "Loveland" section, of which only two parts now remain: Aubrey's "Low Down Blues" and Lottie's "Memories of You" (Losing My Mind). Sissle and Blake had a section called "Les Ambassadeuers- Paris" where they performed "Musical selections with Sissle and Blake" joined by their wives, Harriet and Avis. It was the "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love Will See Us Through" section, but instead of the two couples ending on a hopeful note things fell apart and the duo split.



F.E.'s section was the grandest moment, but it was so ambitious that it never quite worked. Aubrey came to the dressing room to tell F.E. that he was moving to Africa and their partnership was over. In the final version Stokes Mitchell narrates that they finished out the week in Philadelphia together, but after that Aubrey just vanished. In the original version Aubrey left before finishing the run and F.E. was forced to go onstage alone to complete the performance. He was in half black face and there was an empty spotlight night to him where Aubrey was supposed to be performing. The song started out as an angry reprise of Shuffle Along with F.E. attempting to tell jokes and make patter playing both parts of now broken team. It was part "I Can't Do It Alone," part "Duet For One," part "Rose's Turn" and part "Live, Laugh, Love" ending in a complete breakdown. If they had been able to pull it off it could have been the 11 O'Clock to end all 11 O'Clocks, but as much as I intellectually understood what they were trying to do it wasn't coming together and the sequence basically bombed. I so wish they had been able to work it out rather than scrapping the whole idea as it now leaves Stokes Mitchell with very little to do in act two. Plus, with 3/5 of the Follies numbers gone the other two seems all the more out of place.

Dottie,

Audra has costume changes galore, so they just most not have them for the understudy yet.

Josh Henry unfortunately did pull the short straw. He used to have a number dancing on a small staircase that was mirrored upstage (and towards the back wall) by two ensemble dancers. It was a nice musical moment, but ended up on the scrap heap. I really enjoyed his scene where they wouldn't let him in the front door of The Cotton Club last night. With both his lone solo and Loveland sequence cut it does feel like he's been pushed further to the sidelines than the other three male leads.