The Sensational Josephine Baker
Beckett Theatre–Theatre Row – June 26 – September 8
As a singular performer in the famed night clubs of Paris in the 1920s and for decades thereafter, the American-born Josephine Baker certainly deserved the appellation “sensational.” But her reputation deserves more than this diffuse and often confusing bio-play, which contains too much music more recently invented than that associated with the artist herself. We’re an hour into this 90-minute piece before we get “La Baker” as we know her—if only from documentary film footage—replete with hanging banana skirt and pre-Carmen Miranda tomato-basket hat. And it most certainly is too little too late.
Cheryl Howard wrote and performs the work, not only essaying Josephine as girl and woman, but also portraying many other people in her life, of all ages and both sexes. Howard achieves these quick character switches and distinct impersonations rather well, even when they are not introduced properly, or seem to drift into and out of the narrative, sometimes unexplained. For example, “Bricktop,” the legendary cabaret owner who became Josephine’s great friend and perhaps lover, appears when she should, when the two women first meet. But after a long disappearance from the stage, Bricktop returns as the chief narrator of the unhappiness of Baker’s life off stage. It takes a while to figure out who she is this second time around. Often you get the feeling that the characters are there to show off Howard’s versatility rather than being an integral part of a coherent narrative. Or that Howard has done her material so often that she is self-directing its flaws, leaving the director, Ian Streicher, helpless to sort it all out.
The play begins promisingly enough with Baker in the backstage dressing room of her 1975 comeback/farewell performance at the Bobino Theatre in Paris, just four days before her death at age 69. She is nervous about appearing on stage after a long absence, but more concerned about being broke and losing the home in which she is raising a dozen adopted children. But then we flash back to Josephine’s childhood in St. Louis, which seems endless, even though she became a professional in her mid-teens, going on tour with the Dixie Strutters. The new “book” songs, composed by musical director Loren Van Brenk, are meant to enhance the action, but instead slow it down even further. The lyrics, by Van Brenk and several collaborators are equally stultifying and not abetted much by a clutch of arrangers. Most unforgivable of all is the pre-recorded music for songs old and new by a sextet employing a dozen instruments. Howard is forced to sing too loudly, to compensate for this grievous error.
Relief in this long non-greatest hits segment does come when the exuberant juvenile Josephine sings an unaccompanied snippet of “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” (Armand Piron) and when the equally vivacious adolescent Baker sings and dances to “I’m Just Wild About Harry” (Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle) in the Dixie Strutters show. Howard’s own natural vivacity and strong singing voice are on display even more in the too-late segment of Josephine’s last concert, when she shows that she still has it, knocking out such standards as “Who?” (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach) and “I’m Confessin’ That I Love You” (Doc Daugherty, Ellis Reynolds, Al. J. Neiberg). (Unfortunately, Howard still has to shout to overcome the wheezy canned accompaniment.)
Baker was not particularly pretty nor was she a major talent as a singer or dancer. As one of her cast mates put it, “Josephine was a tall, wiry nightmare with buck teeth.” But she evinced the kind of manic energy and determination that could also make someone like Betty Hutton a star in a later decade. Howard nails the subject’s slightly klutzy Saint Vitus dancing, and she sings as well as Baker ever did. Some of the production values are quite good—especially Nicole Wee’s costumes and Tim McMath’s building-block set, enhanced by David Bengali’s evocative photographic projections.
But overall, the show’s deficiencies prevail, making the production not ready for off-Broadway. You just might soak up more of the real Baker at the restaurant next door, Chez Josephine.
About the Author
Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.