Louis Armstrong’s famous songs sound great in a new Broadway show, even if the story of his life and illustration of his personality feel scrambled.
The biographical musical faces some of the same questions as the biography itself: what do you leave in, leave out, what is the central story you‘re telling, what are the essential truths and knots of a person and character you’re trying to tease out? What story of a life are we here for?
Louis Armstrong was an icon who produced iconic music; the title refers to one of his most famous songs which is played at Times Square every new year just after midnight when revelers and TV watchers are bleary-eyed, teetering, some tipsily, between year past and future unknown. Armstrong’s wonderful, rich, guttural timbre is our shepherd between these two tender time zones.
Darlesia Cearcy, left, as Lucille Wilson and James Monroe Iglehart as Louis Armstrong in 'A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical.' The musical doesn’t extend a coherent thesis about what Armstrong is about and who he is, and what it is showing of his life, bar incidents that are well-known enough to provide basic narrative architecture. We don’t see its central character evolve that much.
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