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Best-dressed Broadway musical for us, costumes by
Isabel Toledo, was After Midnight,
recommendable on the basis of its clothing alone: the bejeweled, fingerless
opera gloves, slinky gowns, black tuxedos with black top hats—and white tuxedos
with white top hats. It took the
Tony for choreography, no surprise. Julius “iGlide” Chisolm and Virgil “Lil’O”
Gadson are worth a show of their own, not to mention Karine Plantadit and the synchronized tuxedoed
quintet.
Recreation of Harlem’s Cotton Club has been attempted many times, by Martin Scorsese among others. Every other version tempered high
times with low seriousness, at least in one tune that hinted at the dark side to artistic life, almost as a corrective to the
joy and abandon of the rest. Not so After
Midnight, which banishes the blues and is a total, screaming joy at ninety minutes (no intermission).
The Jazz at Lincoln Center All-Stars big band recreates the
Duke Ellington sound, which will reverberate for days after you have seen the show.
And the singers are perhaps even more amazing than the dancers. Patti LaBelle
and Gladys Knight will be taking turns as featured singer. In February, k. d.
lang made her well-publicized Bdway debut as After Midnight’s featured performer.
The night we were there, “American
Idol” discovery Fantasia Barrino blew us away with her distinctive renderings,
total engagement with music and audience, and blasé, nonchalant way of leaving the
stage when she finished. Toledo barely covers Fantasia in a fringed costume
that Rihanna might feel comfortable in.
The inspirational, soigné, comic genius Adriane Lenox is the Cotton
Club habitué who embodies the spirit of not just After Midnight, but nightclubs everywhere, and is the font of all wisdom
in Women Be Wise, by Sippie Wallace. In her two numbers the audience seriously
falls in love. Adriane Lenox was new to us, but now we’re dying to see her in the
film The Butler.
The singing is worth a show of its own, particularly risqué
ballads like Women Be Wise. Creole Love Call, known as “the orgasm song,” sung
by Rosena M. Hill Jackson, was as tender as it was shocking. It had more plot
than the entire play. After Midnight has a very loose plot of
two of the dancers getting hitched, then one of them dying—though reviving long
enough to jump out of the casket and have one last dance. Yes, that is quite a
plot. But it’s a bit sketchy—whereas Roseana M. Hill Jackson‘s orgasm had
three acts and a couple of subplots.
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| Julius "iGlide" Chisolm |
R Lounge, in the Renaissance Hotel in Times Square, has that
view that you see with the ball dropping on New Year’s Eve. On any
night but New Year’s you enjoy an almost reasonably priced,
more-than-adequate tasty meal. The chefs work hard to make it memorable, thus
the 99-cent homemade potato chips on the menu are unavoidably everyone’s
starter. The chips are good but save your appetite for a healthy
main course such as seared salmon with Israeli couscous and vegetables.
On an average weeknight office workers—mainly female—share
apps and cocktails or even sit alone and talk on their cell phones. When you
feel on top of the world you go to R Lounge—or when you need to unwind by
yourself, apparently. Women eating alone is a great recommendation for any
restaurant. It shows that the place is cool, meets a certain high standard (the
ladies’ room is lovely, in fact, with ikebana, an artistic sink, and gentle
lighting), and is, moreover, romantic: not a sports bar. And possibly it has a romantic view out the window.
The view comes with no cover charge most days. Maneuvering yourself
into the window seat may take some tries. But if you go there on New Year’s Eve,
it will cost you a million dollars (actually, one thousand dollars) to sit
at that very same table, eating potato chips.
