Rock ‘n’ roll reborn: ‘Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical’ at Studebaker Theater and ‘The Who’s Tommy’ at Goodman Theatre
Saint Aubyn and The Company. Photo by Liz Lauren.
There’s plenty of handsome production, showbiz verve, and, yes, personality to be found at Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical, now playing at the Studebaker. At this point, though, I don’t think they’ve tapped the “why” of it all.
Lloyd Price’s story is, no doubt, one that can and should be told. Not just because the likes of “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” and “Stagger Lee” can get anyone bopping along, but because his being Black in the boom years of rock ‘n’ roll is inherently a dramatic one as it posed no end of challenges, least of all being sidelined in favor of more crew-cut “audience-friendly” (read: white) acts. He was also canny enough to be one of the first recording artists to set up their own label and publisher. No doubt, too, Price the entrepreneur gathered giving his old songs a new lease on life via stage musical seemed sensible. (A word to nascent songwriters: never forget about the grand rights.)
But as is currently, Price’s story is told in bullet points as well as the bullets of a record chart. (In addition to his own songs, Personality also features visits from Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Little Richard.) It takes a lot of work to get Price’s songs— twelve-bar honkers meant to get people up and dancing—to drive the story forward in the manner of the best jukebox musicals. “I’m Gonna Get Married” comes the closest to achieving a tangy synthesis: put at the front of the line for the Korean War draft by the machinations of a racist senator, Price and his management figure his speedily marrying someone might spare him. Likewise, the “Mailman Blues”, which closes out the first act with the full reality of that war.
In the second act, the war is barely a blip on the horizon, as is Price’s marriage. (Jukebox musical spouses tend to get short shrift, but Mrs. Price gets it worse than others, and offstage, even.) The latter half is mostly a recitation of the hits he cranked out after rejoining civilian life.
But all the while, Price’s promoter, a virtuous mid-time hustler named Harold Logan (Stanley Wayne Mathis), is firmly in his corner, and it’s the chemistry between Mathis and Saint Aubyn, who plays Price as an adult, that sells the show. I could just be a sucker for tales of the chicanery that drove most of pre-Internet American pop music, but, lawdy, watching these two grease a palm then clasp each other in friendship? That’s an object lesson in giving a show like this some purpose.
Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical runs through July 30th at the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building410 South Michigan Ave. For tickets or more information, please call (312) 753-3210 ext. 102 or visit either personalitymusical.com or fineartsbuilding.com.
Ali Louis Bourzgui. Photo by Liz Lauren.
At this point, Tommy is as much director Des McAnuff’s baby as it is Pete Townshend’s. (Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon did some midwifing, too.)
Before he gave Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons a narrative spine, McAnuff took Tommy—the first rock opera album with legs, The Who’s immortal search for post-WWII spiritual enlightenment (as well as its razzing the chancers who want to make an easy quid or get an easy fix off it)—and gave it stage-able, replay-able shape with no chance of guitar-smashing whatsoever.
Townshend approved of McAnuff’s shaping, as did the 1993 Tony committee, who co-awarded Townshend for Best Original Score nearly thirty years after the album first dropped.
The production of Tommy now playing at the Goodman, once again helmed by McAnuff and rumored to be eyeing a Broadway theatre, is a multimedia dazzler, even if one would’ve preferred a guitar got smashed along the way.
I took my dad along for press night. We’re both removed from Tommy’s generational gravitational pull; he was born a hair too early for the original album to register as “his” music, just as I was for the Broadway cast album. And then we were both aware of that trade-off one has to make when putting a rock album on stage: edges and spikes inevitably have to be sanded off to make the thing producible and performable up to eight times a week. So something has to compensate for that, because otherwise we could have just watched The Who do their thing, spikes and all.
In this case, that’s the stagecraft and the performances, especially those of Ali Louis Bourgazi as the psychosomatically stricken title character, and Allison Luff and Adam Jacobs as his parents doing their damndest to help their son (and, stirringly, though they won’t say it, to help themselves). Choreography by Lorin Latarro, sharp as daggers; music direction by Rick Fox, whoda thunk Tommy was over fifty years old?
If you’re going to put a rock album on stage, McAnuff’s handling of Tommy—then and now—remains the gold standard.
The Who’s Tommy runs through August 6th at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn Ave. For tickets or more information, please call (312) 443-3800 or visit goodmantheatre.org.
For more reviews on these or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.