Cast of `Ain't Misbehavin' creates a joyful romp
By Terry Byrne
Friday, September 19, 2003

Joyous delight, sly humor and an exuberant, toe-tapping beat blend together to create the delicious musical stew that is ``Ain't Misbehavin.' ''

The Huntington Theatre Company gets its season jumping with this high-octane show, wich features the funny, sexy and swinging songs of Fats Waller. Waller's music, which includes the show's title song, celebrates life in all its glory, whether it's a wild part (``This Joint is Jumpin' ''), private pastimes (``T'Ain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do'') or helping with the war effort (``Cash For Your Trash'').

Director and choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge re-creates the interpretation of the revue she's mounted since 1991, but this production has the freshness of a new work. ``Ain't Misbehavin' '' features five top-notch performers who never just sing the songs, they act them out.

``Honeysuckle Rose'' becomes a complete seduction as James Alexander draws out the syllables and opens his eyes wide to woo Terita Redd. When Soara-Joye Ross sings ``Squeeze Me,'' it's easy to feel the hug, and when Redd sings the intimate ``Mean to Me'' she makes the audience members feel they are alone in a room with her. The loose-limbed Todd E. Pettiford makes the hilarious ``The Viper's Drag'' sizzle with every puff of his joint. And Dana Dawson does a wonderful impersonation of a first-time singer with ``Yacht Club Swing,'' part of the show's section featuring ``Ladies Who Sing With the Band.''

Dodge links the songs by creating the world of a Harlem rent party, in which the partygoers are all old friends who are having a good time and ``feed the kitty'' to help pay someone's rent. She's expanded the idea to include the silent reactions of neighbors, as well as a wonderful scene in which one neighbor calls the police. Scenic designer James Noone has created a vibrantly colored setting, dominated by murals painted in the style of Palmer Hayden and Aaron Douglas, and complemented by Michael Phillippi's lighting design.

Unfortunately, the performers were hampered Wednesday night by a muddy mix from the sound system, which made the women sound shrill and most of the lyrics incomprehensible. In some ways, the sound problems might make you wish the show were in a more intimate theater, or even a cabaret setting so miking wouldn't be an issue.

But the real star of this show is musical director Ronald Metcalf, who captures the spirit of Fats Waller. He makes the stride piano style look easy, and with his sleek five-piece band, sets the perfect tempo for the evening.

Although the party atmosphere is paramount, the show also has some lovely intimate moments, especially the show-stopping harmonies and heart-breaking lyrics of ``Black and Blue.''

The beauty of ``Ain't Misbehavin' '' is that it doesn't just offer a look at a musical legend, but also the world in which he lived and worked.

( ``Ain't Misbehavin' '' at the Huntington Theatre Company, through Oct. 19. )

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Fats City
Huntington goes to Harlem with 'Ain't Misbehavin' '

By Ed Siegel, Globe Staff, 9/19/2003

Ain't Misbehavin'
Musical revue conceived by Richard Maltby Jr.
Directed and choreographed by:
Marcia Milgrom Dodge.
Music director, Ronald Metcalf. Set, James Noone. Lights, Michael Philippi.
Costumes, Michael Krass.

At: the Huntington Theatre Company, through Oct. 19. 617-266-0800

"Ain't Misbehavin' " doesn't seem like a musical revue that's screaming for a regional theater company revival. There are frequent commercial tours of the Fats Waller tribute. It was staged in Boston in 1995 with the Pointer Sisters. But then the Huntington Theatre Company production is so entertaining, so smart, and so many light years better than the Broadway road versions that it quickly erases any doubts about its season-opening spot on the Huntington schedule.

Waller was a jazz pianist/composer/singer who had one foot in Tin Pan Alley and the other in Harlem. While the utterly ersatz Broadway version stressed the Tin Pan Alley side of his talent, the Huntington's swings the action, in more ways than one, back to Harlem. Marcia Milgrom Dodge, who has staged the musical in other incarnations, ingeniously reimagines it as a rent party in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance, when ladies were sophisticated and men were dukes.

The rent party, in which money is raised for those in the neighborhood who can't meet their monthly payments, works brilliantly; the cast members walk through the audience en route to a party behind the curtain. As the scrim is raised, we're suddenly in a Harlem nightclub of the 1920s that James Noone's set captures evocatively, with help from paintings on the wall based on work by Palmer Hayden and Aaron Douglas.You wish you could get onstage and join the party, because these sexy strutters are clearly having a ball. Each of the five principals has the singing, acting, and dancing talent to sell both the songs and the sense of time and place. While it's tempting to tie their voices to their distinctive body types, the fact is that they all demonstrate tremendous range, in everything from Broadway-type ballads to blues-styled bawdiness. Who's the best of the five? Whoever sang the last song. The two men, though, Todd E. Pettiford and James Alexander, do get to show off comic flair with, respectively, "The Viper's Drag," a jokey celebration of marijuana, and "Your Feet's Too Big," a gentle denigration of women with expansive extremities.

The three musicians onstage at the beginning are eventually joined by a horn section that enters casually, walking through the party and flirting with the women before joining the trio. All these fine local musicians are led by Ronald Metcalf, a New York-based pianist who captures Waller's stride style -- rhythm with the left hand, melody with the right -- with easy flair. You wish that the singers weren't miked -- they don't seem to need it -- so his playing would be even more prominent.

The arc and pacing of the show are far better than in the commercial version, whose frenetic pace made it seem like a bland recital of Waller's greatest hits. And they are great, from the title song to " 'T Ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do," "Honeysuckle Rose," "The Joint Is Jumpin'," and "Black and Blue," which is slowed down to add a poignant note of melancholy to the proceedings. But if the pace here is slower, it certainly isn't lacking in energy.

The one cavil is the overly long radio show within the party at the end of Act I; it just gets in the way and breaks the mood. The great second-act band numbers and solos, in which musicians and singers get to flash more personality, get things back on track.

Waller played at rent parties in the '20s and '30s, and what parties they must have been. "Ain't Misbehavin' " at the Huntington is the next best thing to being there.

Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company