When you first see Chad Kimball in this, you begin to wonder if his character is a bit off the beam. He spontaneously giggles like some famous film psychos, and for the only white man outside a police officer to visit Beale Street in Memphis, he's seemingly out of his element. But once he begins to play the piano and spin around as he sings, it's clear that his soul is closer to Chuck Berry than Perry Como. The moment he sees sultry Montagu Glover, he's in love. But racial tensions on both sides get out of control, especially as the white kids begin to love what the square older white folks refer condescendingly as "race music".
What should have been a star making role for the gorgeous Ms. Glover is one of Broadway's mysteries as she hasn't had a lead role since. She hides her vulnerability between the typical sassiness, but something about Kimball's freaky nature appeals to her as he devotes his time to getting her a radio and record deal. Kimball is funny, but certainly mannerisms of his become a bit creepy after a while. Where this succeeds outside of Glover's winning performance is in the music and the historical context, paralleling some of the events in the smash hit "Dreamgirls" and the entertaining but pointless "Motown" which worked better through the book of the disguised fictional version. "Memphis", though, covers an earlier time, a different location, and deals with integration issues that the other shows pretty much ignored.
If you feel uncomfortable with certain frictions between the whites and blacks, then the show is succeeding in what it set out to do. There's more than a hit of violence as Glover deals with falling in love with a white man with a horrific turn of events. The fallout from that creates seemingly unfixable conflicts, aided by the racism of Kimball's mother (Cass Morgan), presented as a good Christian woman using the gospel to hide behind her hate. The upbeat score is thrilling, although there's no real standout. For me, this shows the ridiculousness of racial tensions, because when it comes down to it, all each of us wants is a bit of happiness, a chance at love, and of course a good beat so we can reach deeply inside to find our own rock n' roll.
What should have been a star making role for the gorgeous Ms. Glover is one of Broadway's mysteries as she hasn't had a lead role since. She hides her vulnerability between the typical sassiness, but something about Kimball's freaky nature appeals to her as he devotes his time to getting her a radio and record deal. Kimball is funny, but certainly mannerisms of his become a bit creepy after a while. Where this succeeds outside of Glover's winning performance is in the music and the historical context, paralleling some of the events in the smash hit "Dreamgirls" and the entertaining but pointless "Motown" which worked better through the book of the disguised fictional version. "Memphis", though, covers an earlier time, a different location, and deals with integration issues that the other shows pretty much ignored.
If you feel uncomfortable with certain frictions between the whites and blacks, then the show is succeeding in what it set out to do. There's more than a hit of violence as Glover deals with falling in love with a white man with a horrific turn of events. The fallout from that creates seemingly unfixable conflicts, aided by the racism of Kimball's mother (Cass Morgan), presented as a good Christian woman using the gospel to hide behind her hate. The upbeat score is thrilling, although there's no real standout. For me, this shows the ridiculousness of racial tensions, because when it comes down to it, all each of us wants is a bit of happiness, a chance at love, and of course a good beat so we can reach deeply inside to find our own rock n' roll.