Neon Lights (and No Psychiatrist)
BEFORE, AND AFTER, MOTOWN THE MUSICAL
If the Four Tops’ I’ll Be There opens on Broadway this autumn as planned, it will be among the 20 (give or take) stage musicals with Motown connections to have been produced in the past 35 years.
These range from the obvious (Motown The Musical, Ain’t Too Proud) to the obscure (Sang Sista Sang, Dreamgirl Deferred), and include one (The First Wives Club) with overstated ambitions to play the Great White Way. Another batch of contenders involved Mickey Stevenson, while the music for still another three was written by Lamont Dozier.
And the Marvelettes inspired two.
From Broadway to the West End
The grandfather of Motown musicals is, of course, Berry Gordy, who developed Broadway interests and aspirations in the 1970s, investing in shows such as Pippin, Guys and Dolls, The Baker’s Wife and Daddy Goodness. (Jobete songwriter Ron Miller was an in-house asset in this regard, and co-authored Daddy Goodness with Ken Hirsch.) After the sale of Motown Records, he teamed up circa 1997 with Dick Clark and Andre Harrell to work on an original production named after one of his biggest hits as a songwriter, Do You Love Me.
Time passed, and in 2006 came the announcement that Gordy was instead prepping a Motown-scored musical called Ain’t No Mountain High Enough for Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group, to open at the Ahmanson Theatre there. “It was a fictional story set in a high school,” Gordy later told Mike Boehm of the Los Angeles Times, “mainly about a 15-year-old girl living in today’s times with today’s problems and using Motown music. I was pretty heavy into that, trying to do something that’s meaningful for today’s teenagers and make it entertaining.”
But the Motown founder was persuaded to abandon the project – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough never opened – by industry peers. “Doug Morris [of Universal Music] said, ‘If you do a fictional play and don’t do your own story, you need to see a psychiatrist.’ ” And so, Motown The Musical came to pass, debuting on Broadway in the spring of 2013, and going on to gross $116 million at the domestic boxoffice.
Still, both Mickey Stevenson and Holland/Dozier/Holland had stepped into the theatrical sphere years earlier, and several Hitsville hitmakers had appeared in musicals, albeit not on Broadway. Stevenson, in particular, was industrious throughout the 1980s, channelling his creative skills into stage productions in Los Angeles, such as Showgirls and Color Me Dorothy, with writer/director Cliff Roquemore. So if you’re prepared for a mountain of minutiae, here’s a selective guide to theatrical adventures associated with Motown, listed in chronological order.
The Gospel Truth, 1987. Mickey Stevenson co-wrote and scored this musical about a minister’s clash with his son, which played at Los Angeles’ Beverly Theatre. It wasn’t “state-of-the-art music drama,” wrote one reviewer, “but it does try to insert a real story between its 18 songs, rather than the usual sandwich filling.” Among the leads was Hodges, James & Smith alumni Pat Hodges, who was later succeeded in the part by Jennifer Holliday.
Sang, Sista, Sang, 1993. Another Stevenson project, created with Smokey Robinson, this depicted six legendary singers – Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson – assembled in a waystation after death, before being assigned to their final destination. It played at a couple of Los Angeles venues, with Pat Hodges again cast (as Bessie Smith) and displaying “a fascinating interior mixture of pain and humour,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Mosaic’s Marvelettes
Now That I Can Dance – Motown 1962, 2005. Primarily built around the story of the Marvelettes, the well-regarded musical first shone at Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theatre, and has since been revived four times. Writer/director Rick Sperling drew on interviews with the group’s Katherine Anderson, among other Hitsvillians of the period, and the Motown Museum was closely involved, too. “What I loved about the show,” author/journalist Susan Whitall, whose Women of Motown was a resource for Sperling, told me recently, “was that it took a lesser-known but vital-to-Motown story as its central theme, but weaved in all the other Motown acts who were hanging around in 1962. And I couldn’t believe it: they found a short guy with a baby face who acted just like Berry Gordy. How many of those are there in the world?”
The First Wives Club, 2009. This was the movie-turned-musical (about three women recovering from failed marriages) which reteamed Eddie and Brian Holland with Lamont Dozier after a couple of decades, with a score featuring new material as well as H/D/H signature songs. “All our records were geared toward females, so it’s a natural” writing a musical with a similar idea, Eddie Holland told the Los Angeles Times. “We grew up in a household of females that raised us and ruled the roost.” The production was first staged in San Diego, then rebooted for a run at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre in 2015. Despite the calibre of talent involved, including orchestrations and arrangements by H.B. Barnum, the Broadway goal of a show which Variety unkindly called “theatrical plastic” was never achieved.
Memories of Motown, 2009. What may have been the first overseas attempt to spin the Hitsville U.S.A. yarn on stage was produced at Berlin’s Estrel hotel-cum-festival centre, with Martha Reeves and the Contours’ Sylvester Potts among those performing its 30 numbers. Mickey Stevenson – again! – co-wrote the script and penned “The Motown Song” for the occasion, working with the late Al Abrams, Motown’s first PR man; the producer was Bernhard Kurz.
Motown The Musical, 2013. Berry Gordy’s psychiatrist-avoiding memoir lit up Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre for almost two years, and with a touring company on the road during 2014-15. More than 60 songs were featured, although many in excerpts; Gordy himself wrote three new ones, with Michael Lovesmith. “We wanted to make it a real musical and not a jukebox musical,” he told Mike Boehm, “and to make [certain scenes] work, I was trying to write a song that would fit the play better than the old songs.” The director was Charles Randolph-Wright, whose Broadway edition earned four Tony nominations. In 2016, Motown The Musical crossed the Atlantic for a successful, three-year run at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre, and a U.K. roadshow version.
A deeper narrative, a gritty story
The Marvelous Marvelettes, 2014. The second foray into the quintet’s history was written by Reginald Williams, and produced by Chicago’s Black Ensemble Theater. The dramatic device for reflecting upon, and then re-enacting, the group’s chequered career was an airport coffee-shop reunion at middle age of members Katherine Anderson (played by Christina Harper) and Juanita Cowart (Kylah Frye). The Windy City’s Sun Times called it “deftly penned” and “exuberantly directed,” and also identified Melanie McCullough, the actress playing Gladys Horton, as a performer “more than ready for Broadway.”
Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money, 2014. The Chicago Children’s Theatre was the venue for Lamont Dozier’s second theatrical excursion, offering new songs written with his son, Paris, to colour a story (based on a popular children’s book) about a 10-year-old who acquires a dollar bill worth much, much more. “ ‘Mr. Chickee’ is packed with cheery, hook-heavy songs,” declared the Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones when the production opened, “a blend, really, of the senior Dozier’s signature, Motown-like sound and the younger Dozier’s excursion into hip-hop stylings.” The pair reteamed in 2017 for Last Stop on Market Street, another children’s musical, about a suburban schoolboy’s urban encounters as he travelled on a crosstown bus to visit a relative. Like the Doziers’ first venture, this one played at the Chicago Children’s Theatre, then moved (with added songs) to the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis in 2018. Earlier this year, it was produced in St. Louis.
Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, 2019. By now, this song-and-dance extravaganza is as familiar to Motown followers as Motown The Musical – and probably better reviewed. The show made its Broadway debut after successful 2017-18 tryouts in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Toronto, then broke boxoffice records at its New York home, the Imperial Theatre. With a script by garlanded Dominique Morisseau (based on Otis Williams’ memoir), it was directed by Des McAnuff and – so importantly – choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. A variety of complimented actors played the Temptations, and the overall result – abundant audiences aside – included 12 Tony nominations. A long run seemed assured, but then coronavirus stepped in, shutting down the Imperial and an anticipated national tour, and short-circuiting London plans. In late ’21, Ain’t Too Proud returned briefly to Broadway, then closed; however, the touring company is currently on the road, and a U.K. production remains a possibility.
Dreamgirl Deferred, 2020. The ascent and decline of Florence Ballard was always a candidate for theatrical drama, although this Houston production seems to be little-known. It was presented by playwright/director Vincent Victoria at the city’s Midtown Art Center, with two actresses: Maya Flowers for the Supremes era, Melissa Leon for the later, tragic arc. “The play works best when it drifts away from Dreamgirls territory,” wrote Broadway World reviewer Brett Cullum, “and dares to give us a deeper narrative of the real gritty story of Florence Ballard.” Whether the show obtained rights to use the relevant music is not clear, nor does it seem to have travelled elsewhere.
The Soul of Motown, 2021. Given their platinum song catalogue and the popularity of Motown The Musical, a theatrical biography of Holland/Dozier/Holland was perhaps inevitable, on one scale or another. Canada’s Stage West in Calgary offered this production, written by Gregg Ostrin, Howard Pechet and Gary Lloyd, with the Holland brothers’ longtime associate, Shirley Washington, as creative consultant. Music aside, Eddie Holland was portrayed as “a gentle bully” and Brian Holland as “a shy genius,” according to the Calgary Herald’s Louis Hobson, while Lamont Dozier was “an afterthought – something which has to be corrected.” Hobson also gave Amanda De Freitas particular credit for her portrayal of Diana Ross.
Come and get these memories in Calgary
MJ, 2022. Currently playing on Broadway – it opened in February – is this estate-approved celebration of Michael Jackson’s, uh, unique life, starring Myles Frost in the title role. To a script by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, it’s directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. For all the thrills of the performance, there have been reservations in the media. Typical was Rolling Stone’s David Browne: “You’ll leave the Neil Simon Theatre both on a giddy high from Jackson’s music,” he wrote, “but also grappling with what was and wasn’t incorporated.” Still, the production is considered more substantial than Thriller Live, the musical revue which played in theatres internationally from 2007-2020. Whether MJ will be multi-platinum on the Great White Way remains to be seen.
And so, as noted, a selective summary (what, no Dreamgirls?). But for time and space, it might have included song-stuffed revues such as Beehive, wherein Mary Wilson played Aretha Franklin at Calgary’s Stage West in 1989, or Dream Street, a so-called “compilation musical” which ran in Las Vegas during the 1980s with, among others, Scherrie Payne. (The latter show also featured actor/singer/Supremes archaeologist George Solomon.) Then there was the 1987 Detroit edition of August Wilson’s powerful Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, with Earl Van Dyke and Beans Bowles.
Other projects never came to pass, such as Mickey Stevenson’s Les Gemmes, about a coterie of female singers en route to stardom, or Heat Wave, developed by Suzanne de Passe. “We mounted a production of it,” says George Solomon, “but it never got sold. It starred Syreeta, who played a character named Bernadette, in love with a boy named Jimmy Mack. I was the only white character in the show, named Cole Slaw!”
Yet the success on Broadway, and beyond, of Motown The Musical and Ain’t Too Proud – not to mention the hopes for I’ll Be There, now in pre-production – indicates that the legacy of 2648 West Grand will continue to occupy stages and theatres at home and abroad for years to come. Curtain up…
Footlights and footnotes: as the Grammys are to music, the Tony Awards are to theatre. One of the few occasions (the only one?) when a Motown star earned a Tony was in 1977. This was for An Evening With Diana Ross, her SRO run at Broadway’s Palace Theatre from June 14 to July 3, 1976, which was honoured as best musical special. She subsequently took the show on the road, and during a stint at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles that September, it was recorded by Motown. The 2LP set came out the following January, and is best profiled in The Diana Ross Project. It’s also available on digital streaming services, as the original cast albums for Motown The Music, Ain’t Too Proud and MJ.