Getting the Swing

MUSICAL REVUES are the stage craze of the hour, at Harvard and in professional theaters. Last fall two student-written revues in the Houses played to big audiences; Ain't Misbehavin', a set of Fats Waller numbers, won the Tony for Best Musical of 1978 and just opened in Boston; and last week this hardy genre of theater made it to the Loeb Mainstage in the form of Ellington at Eight, a collection of Duke Ellington classics. It shivered a bit in the Loeb's vasty spaces, but perked up its head and boldly smiled on. Despite occasional lapses in atmosphere, the performers' vigor and old-favorite songs were sure to lift the audience's spirits, too.

The company of 13 singers and dancers, backed by an 18-piece band behind a scrim, worked its way through about 20 Ellington numbers in the course of two hours. They seemed to have all they needed to conjure up a '40s nightclub--dim lights, thick smoke, and swinging music. But they missed the intimacy of a nightclub-sized area; the Loeb stage is pretty forbidding, especially when it's set up as a proscenium instead of the modified theater-in-the-round Loeb directors often choose. Michael Der Manuelian, Ellington's director, didn't even try to protect his performers against the mainstage's tendency to dwarf actors. They sometimes looked a little lost; Ellington at Eight could have far better succeeded in a far smaller theater.

This gripe aside, let the individuals whose skills kept the listeners tapping their feet receive their due. The eight women in the cast generally asserted their characters better than the men--it was easier to remember them from one number to the next. But, merged into a company, as at the beginning and end of the show, it was the performers' collective energy and not their individuality that shone. Der Manuelian made "It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" both the opening and closing number. It served well--the chorus has an unforgettable tune, and "doo-wah, doo-wah"s, too. Another group number, "Ring Dem Bells," smartly choreographed and lively, gave Joe Orlando and his colleagues a chance to show their skill with batons, which they politely refused--passing the props onto the stage, across it and off again without any twirling.

But it's both the blessing and the curse of musical revues that a few numbers and performers always stick out. Three women--Judy Banks, Tangee Griffin, and Sherri Hays--each had show-stealing songs. Banks's "Love You Madly" used a great bit of stage business, bringing the entire cast out from under a giant envelope onstage, but Banks's deep-chested, poignant singing elevated the song from cuteness. Griffin made "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good" the model of a torch song, alone on stage with nothing but a non-functional microphone, a spotlight and her voice--but that was enough. Hays deserves the garland for the single most beautiful song of the evening; "Don't You Know I Care" in her hands, from her mouth, melted away into perfection.

THE SUCCESS OF the other songs depended more on a combination of good staging and acting than vocal purity. In "Strange Feeling," for example, smoke flowed like a waterfall from the back of the stage over the front edge, as the offstage male chorus eerily echoed Susan Perkins's ghostly singing.

Good singing undoubtedly held Ellington together; the dancing, though accomplished and well-executed, changed styles too fast and too often. Crystal Terry's delightful tap-dancing number, "I'm Just a Lucky So and So," held together a daring length of time while the band held still, but it jostled the modern-ballet choreography in nearby numbers. The ballet bits added a little visual spice to a largely aural show, and let lithe Bonnie Zimering show her impressively precise dancing--but fancy ballet choreography and Duke Ellington are uncomfortable stage-mates at best.

The big band played well, never drowning singers out, but its sound sometimes became a bit muddied on the long trip from the back of the Loeb stage into the auditorium. During the entr'acte, when the curtain which hid the musicians lifted and the spot shone on them for a change, the murk cleared, and the audience could pay some attention to the type of music Ellington wrote without singers' personalities intruding.

That, really, was the only reservation anyone could have about Ellington at Eight--at times it seemed more a showcase for the performers' undeniable talents than a celebration of Ellington's genius. Aside from the title and the song "Duke's Place," the show never referred to Ellington himself; neither the program notes nor the staging made even the minimal attempts Ain't Misbehavin' does to educate its audience. Still, in the end there's no substitute for hearing these songs, and if they don't excite you about the life and times of their author then no amount of background information will. The staging, the dancing, the acting sometimes fitted together and sometimes missed altogether in Ellington at Eight, but where it counted--in the tunes--the performers didn't let the Duke down.