Good morning, and welcome to Broadway News’ Broadway Review by Brittani Samuel — our overview of reactions, recommendations and information tied to last night’s Broadway opening of “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical.”
RUNDOWN
Louis Armstrong went by several names. In his hometown of New Orleans, people leaned into an American English pronunciation, as if it were spelled “Lewis.” Then, there’s the airy French pronunciation, Lou-ee, and nicknames like Satchmo and Pops. “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical” — a new jukebox musical of songs made famous by Armstrong with a book by Aurin Squire — aims to find the man behind these monikers.
The show spans several decades of the jazz master’s work, structured in four chapters — each one in a new city with a new wife. A cushy formula like this is familiar in the jukebox form, and this musical falls into an equally common trap: glossing over a subject’s deeper motivations in favor of hollow recitations of spotlight-worthy moments in the star’s life. Squire uses broad strokes to paint a portrait of an alluringly jovial Louis Armstrong (James Monroe Iglehart), who enjoys smoking weed and seducing women, sources of comfort for a life lived mostly on the road. The only thing that grounds Louis is his horn, and he is loyal to the music.
The women? Less so. Armstrong married four times, and the script jettisons each wife as soon as Louis eyes a new city. That doesn’t mean there aren’t romantic, funny and heartwarming moments between Iglehart and his scene partners. And the actors playing these women do arduous work to dramatize the toe-tappy tunes into compelling moments of dramatic conflict. Iglehart is aptly charming in this role — the modulations and mimicry of that iconic gravel is everything you want it to be — but charisma alone can only do so much to invigorate a plain script that too often skims over the complexities of Louis’ life as a Black artist in the early 20th century.
