The late, great jazz trumpeter and gravel-voiced singer's 1964 recording of “Hello, Dolly!” dethroned the Beatles from a 14-week run atop Billboard’s Hot 100. He pulled off that feat at the record-setting age of 62, scoring the biggest seller of his career and topping the chart for 22 weeks with a song he hadn’t particularly wanted to record.
As impactful, admired, and versatile as he was during a multifaceted career that began when he was only 13 years old and lasted until his death at 69, Armstrong’s life was the stuff of complicated drama.
At the age of 11, Armstrong dropped out of school and later was sent to the Colored Waifs Home in his native New Orleans for taking and firing his stepdad’s gun while celebrating New Year’s Eve. He went on to marry four times — faithful, he was not — and his first wife, Daisy Parker, was working as a prostitute when they met. For decades, he was an enthusiastic pot smoker, and he spent nine days in jail for drug possession in 1930. At several points, the Mob was after him. Some of his fellow black musicians called him an Uncle Tom for ingratiating himself with white audiences, yet his outspokenness during the civil rights era earned him an FBI file.
Complicated, yes, yet so rich with interpretive artistic possibilities.
That’s what Tony Award-nominated director Christopher Renshaw and his writer friend, Andrew Delaplaine, thought when they came up with the idea for the biographical Armstrong musical A Wonderful World.
With a book written by South Florida native Aurin Squire and nearly 40 Armstrong-linked songs arranged and orchestrated by Annastasia Victory and Michael O. Mitchell, the show will see its official Miami New Drama world premiere Saturday, March 14, at the Colony Theatre in South Beach. Previews are set to begin Thursday, March 5, and the musical will run through Sunday, April 5.
Taking its title from the 1967 Armstrong recording “What a Wonderful World,” the musical is Miami New Drama’s most ambitious show since its debut in 2016 with The Golem of Havana. With a cast of 18 and a seven-member band, the production has a $1.2 million budget, thanks in part to enhancement money from investors Tom and Renee Rodgers. A typical Miami New Drama show costs $300,000.
Told from the shifting perspectives of his four wives, A Wonderful World is full of Armstrong songs both well known and obscure. But it is not, everyone involved emphasizes, a simple jukebox musical.
“This is a dangerous play. It’s not a safe, feel-good play,” says Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann, who played collaborative matchmaker between playwright Squire and director Renshaw. “It explores without restriction the life of a very complicated man. We don’t know about him in the way we know about an artist like Elvis... It’s impossible to tell the story of Louis Armstrong without telling the story of racism in America in the 20th Century. And the repercussions are not finished.”
Playwright Aurin Squire (left) and director Christopher Renshaw are collaborating on the Miami New Drama world premiere of A Wonderful World.
Photo courtesy of Aurin Squire
He first took a deep dive into Armstrong’s life through happenstance. When he was at Manhattan’s New School, he spent a year working as a gig coordinator for the School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. In a secret-Santa gift exchange among the musicians, one present was left, and it went to Squire.
“It was a giant biography of Louis Armstrong,” he recalls. “I sat and read it and became enthralled and engrossed in it.”
Squire says of the reason he signed on to write A Wonderful World: “I’m fascinated by his life. He led the life of 20 people compressed into one. I knew Miami New Drama would let us create it the way we wanted to.”
Renshaw — a British director whose Broadway and West End credits include Taboo, We Will Rock You, and the Tony-winning 1996 revival of The King and I — has lived a stone’s throw from the Colony Theatre for the past 14 years. He notes that A Wonderful World progressed from idea to production in about a year and a half, a very quick developmental process for a new musical.
“The only other show I directed that came together this fast was the original Taboo with Boy George,” Renshaw says. “It can happen when you have the right collaborators and an artistic director willing to take risks. I’m getting older and don’t want to spend years on a musical.”
A white British theater artist, Renshaw says he was initially insecure about taking on a show about “an icon of black American culture.” Squire reassured him about the value of his perspective and then created a script the director calls “filmic” and unconventional in its style.
“For example, ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love’ is used for all four wives in different situations,” Renshaw says. “The music feels like it was written for the show.”
Also on the creative team with Renshaw and Squire are choreographer Rickey Tripp, set designer Adam Koch, associate set designer Steven Royal, costume designer Ari Fulton, lighting designer Cory Pattak, and Tony-winning sound designer Kai Harada.
As for the actors, the world-premiere cast is a mix of New York- and South Florida-based performers.
Juson Williams — a New York actor, director, and choreographer who appeared in the 2001 Actors’ Playhouse production of Smokey Joe’s Cafe — stars as Armstrong. Although he doesn’t play the trumpet, the actor is altering his natural tenor voice to speak and sing with some of Armstrong’s signature rasp. Yamin Mustafa will perform live when Williams mimes playing the instrument.
“I’m not trying to emulate him; it needs to be the essence of him because we are doing an icon,” Williams says.
Juson Williams plays jazz great Louis Armstrong in the Miami New Drama world premiere of A Wonderful World.
Photo courtesy of Roberto Mata
Also in key roles are Carbonell Award-winning actor Stephen G. Anthony as Joe Glaser and actor/playwright Michael McKeever as Johnny Collins, men who were Armstrong’s managers; DeWitt Fleming Jr. as Lincoln Perry, the actor/comedian known as Stepin Fetchit; Gavin Gregory as bandleader and cornet player King Joe Oliver; Carbonell winner Lindsey Corey as a reporter; Jamal Christopher Douglas as Banjo Boy; and Kareema Khouri as a nightclub singer.
Once cast, Williams — who describes himself as “an R&B singer who incorporates jazz” — began his Armstrong research and trained how to properly hold a trumpet. What he discovered, he says, are similarities between himself and the man known as “Satchmo,” “Satch,” and “Pops.”
“His story lines up with mine,” Williams says. “I fight hard for the things I believe in. I don’t get things easily. I hide things by being so joyful; Louis did that too... This is a beautiful show. I feel it was crafted for me. I’m exercising muscles I didn’t know I had. Everything I can do, I do in this show... This is all the universe feeding into it. When it’s right, it’s right.”
For Figgins, creating the role of Daisy Parker, whom she describes as “very complex, violent, not educated but with a lot of heart,” has involved a certain amount of freedom because the only descriptions of her came from Armstrong, who was also a prolific writer.
“This has changed my perspective on sex work. It’s hard, violent, and dangerous,” Figgins says. “This has been a surprising journey. There are layers to Daisy, including loving a man you can’t go with when he’s ready to move on with his career. Yet she never thought marriage was a possibility, never expected to find a love who would see her and accept her.”
Gordon identifies with the passion that pianist Lil Harden brought to her music and her makeover of the man she initially saw as “a country bumpkin.” Gordon says of Williams: “He has such an infectious personality, such charisma. You just want to hug him.” She also appreciates the way Armstrong’s music and Squire’s writing are intertwined, as well as the combination of narration and scenes.
“I’ve never experienced this as an actress. There’s a flow. It keeps the audience leaning forward,” she says.
Henry, who moved to New York from Miami three years ago to kick-start her acting career, read Laurence Bergreen’s 2012 Armstrong biography, An Extravagant Life, while she researched Alpha Smith — who was, she points out, “the only wife who left Louis.”
Acting, she says, is a challenge she appreciates. “I love the psychological investigation of it. I thought acting would bring me closer to [understanding] myself... Alpha is still evolving. I tell myself I can do this. We are our own worst critics,” she says.
Hope, who grew up in Orlando, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida and masters of fine arts from Florida State University and Sarasota’s Asolo Repertory Theatre. To research Lucille, Wilson took the subway to Queens, where she perused archives and memorabilia Armstrong’s widow donated to the City of New York and toured the couple’s home.
She is a writer as well as a performer, and she has a deep appreciation for Squire’s work in A Wonderful World.
“The book could stand on its own as a play. I was impressed with how complex it is,” Hope says. “You get smart, fun, sometimes serious and dark commentary on the state of the human soul. I hope it does go to Broadway.”
That’s a hope shared by everyone involved, though Hausmann, Miami New Drama's artistic director, drives home a point.
“This is a black empowerment show written by an African-American member of this community. Aurin is a Miami-Dade guy in all of his writing,” he says. “I think this has extraordinary potential. But before that, I want it to resonate profoundly in this community.”
— Christine Dolen, ArtburstMiami.com
A Wonderful World. Thursday, March 5, through Sunday, April 5, at the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach; 305-674-1040; colonymb.org. Tickets cost $39 to $85 via colonymb.org.
