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Which is the most powerful force in the universe: music, love, or racism? As Memphis, with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music and lyrics by David Bryan, teaches us, the most powerful force is none of these, but is instead the stubbornness of a man full of the first two who can’t abide the third.
Memphis, presented at Regal Cinemas through Tuesday by Fathom Events, takes place in, well, Memphis, in the middle of the racially-charged nineteen-fifties. Huey Calhoun (Chad Kimball) is a white boy too stupid (or willful) to realize that he shouldn’t be hanging out on Beale Street after dark—that’s colored territory. But hang out there he must, for it’s the only place where he can listen to the music he calls the music of his soul: true, straight-from-the-gospel-churches rock ‘n’ roll. He stumbles across Delray’s, an underground club run by the eponymous Delray (J. Bernard Calloway) to raise money so his supremely talented sister Felicia (Montego Glover) can cut a record. But Huey wants to take things one step further: Felicia’s going to cut her record alright, and he’s going to get a job at a radio station and use Felicia’s voice to bring rock ‘n’ roll from the edges of the radio right to the ears of all the teens in Tennessee and make Felicia a star. Of course, he may just start a cultural revolution in the process.
To say the performance was outstanding is to state the obvious. The production comes straight from Broadway, after all, and saying that the show represents the pinnacle of theatre would be akin to declaring that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. But a show this outstanding deserves the fullest praise one can offer regardless of its self-evidence. The dancing was smooth and crisp, the voices soaring and beautiful, the acting heartfelt and humorous—all of it, from the two leads to White Girl #2. But the true standout is Kimball. No, he doesn’t dance much, and no, his voice, though stunning (especially in the heart-wrenching ballad “Memphis Lives in Me”) doesn’t distinguish itself among a cast full of equally powerful singers, but his interpretation of Huey defines the way the role ought to be played for all future incarnations of the show.
As director Christopher Ashley described in the “behind-the-scenes” portion of the presentation, Kimball’s interpretation of Huey is, from the moment he auditioned, a sense of crazy bordering on dangerous. It’s a line Kimball treads the entirety of the show, sometimes walking on both sides within the same scene. Huey seems ambitious, then moments later arrogant; in love, then obsessed; “Aw, shucks”, then “Oh sh**”. But through it all Kimball keeps Huey likable because he imbues the character with such passion in the woman he loves, the music he lives, and the equality everyone deserves that we cannot help but root for him to achieve his goals, even if we occasionally disagree with how he tries to reach them. It also helps that Kimball made Huey a bit of a dullard; he is not smart enough for his aims to be the result of a scheming mind, so we are left to conclude that they come from pure, foolish sincerity.
The show itself is best described as Hairspray’s answer to the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Memphis takes the best parts of Hairspray—the racial message and the catchy-as-hell music—and replaces the (well-used and exuberant) corniness with a grittier take on America’s era of racial inequality. Which is not to say one approach is better than the other—both shows won their fair share of Tony Awards—just that one is a mouth-watering cheeseburger to the other’s Prime-grade steak. They’re both great meals, it just depends on your mood.
The only weakness of the show rests with the character of Mama Calhoun (Cass Morgan). In Act One, she is so horrified that her son is fraternizing with a bunch of coloreds that when Felicia visits to show her freshly-grooved recording to Huey, Mama breaks the record in two and asks Felicia to leave her family alone. Then in Act Two, as Huey debates whether to move to New York to support Felicia, Mama encourages Huey to go, explaining her views on colored folk have changed since she heard a gospel choir performing. Real-world experience suggests it takes a bit more than a single church service to change someone so set in her ways, and as a result this transformation rings rather false. But the song Mama sings to celebrate her awakening (“Change Don’t Come Easy”) is so darn fun and the rest of the show so darn authentic that we are happy to think of the incident as a minor blip on the radar as Memphis sails smoothly along.
But the true power of Memphis is its ability to penetrate the very depths of the soul. Despite the use of professional-quality equipment, there were several instances where song lyrics were difficult to discern. During the first few numbers this was frustrating. By the end of the show it didn’t matter. The power of rock ‘n’ roll, and the passion behind the men and women trying to elevate it to something higher than a “black” art form, is so all-encompassing that it doesn’t matter that the songs couldn’t be understood—they could be felt, deep in the subconscious on an almost visceral level. Memphis takes the feeling of rock ‘n’ roll and broadcasts it so loud and clear that it envelops you, sweeping you up in a wave of infectious joy until the innermost chambers of your heart are singing, dancing, and fighting along with the entire cast—and a few of your outermost parts join the fun, too.
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