John Douglas Thompson can do just about anything, but so far as I know, he can’t be in two places at once. If you follow my calendar, then you know that Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, will be produced more or less simultaneously this January at Chicago’s Court Theatre and San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater. The San Francisco production is a remounting of the version of Satchmo that was seen off Broadway in 2014, starring John and directed by Gordon Edelstein. The Chicago production, by contrast, will be newly staged by Charles Newell, the Court’s artistic director, whose work I’ve praised time and again in my Wall Street Journal drama column. Since John isn’t capable of bilocation, Charlie had to find somebody new to follow in his giant footsteps.
To this end, the Court Theatre announced today that the triple role of Louis Armstrong, Joe Glaser, and Miles Davis will be played there by Barry Shabaka Henley, a distinguished veteran of stage and screen whose arm-long list of credits includes Mingus Remixed, his own one-man show about the great bassist-composer. (You’re most likely to remember him as the aging jazz musician in Michael Mann’s Collateral, in which he appeared opposite Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx.) I have yet to meet Shabaka or see him on stage, but I know and esteem his film and TV work, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he’ll give a fabulous performance.
I should mention that the Court’s production of Satchmo will be part of a community-wide Louis Armstrong Festival that will also include concerts, screenings of Armstrong’s films, an art exhibition, and a symposium about Armstrong’s life and work in which I will be appearing jointly with my friend and colleague Ricky Riccardi, the author of What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years, the other indispensable book about Satchmo. I’ll have more to say about the festival as the dates draw nearer, but you can read all about it now by going here.
As for my new colleague-to-be, I can’t wait to show up at the Court’s rehearsal hall on the morning of December 8 and watch him do his stuff. Welcome aboard, sir.
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A scene from Collateral: