Here’s another excellent preview piece about Satchmo at the Waldorf, this one written by Al Krulick for the Orlando Weekly:
Maybe the moniker “Satchmo” is one you’ve heard. If you’re a fan of the old black-and-white movie musicals, have seen clips from television’s early days or have any interest in jazz or American popular music, you probably know who Louis Armstrong is. You have a mental picture of a broadly smiling, wide-eyed African-American man, stout but debonair, blasting powerful notes on his trumpet, trading quips with Bing Crosby or Ed Sullivan, or perhaps singing “Hello, Dolly” in a voice that sounds like sandpaper rubbing against a human larynx. But if that’s all you know about one of America’s great musical geniuses, you still have much to learn.
Satchmo at the Waldorf, a new play by author and Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout based on his biography Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, intends to flesh out the details of Armstrong’s long and productive musical life and, according to Teachout, “reveal the man behind the smile.”
The one-man, two-character show will have its world premiere this week at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater. Dennis Neal stars as Louis Armstrong and also as his longtime manager and protector, Joe Glaser, with whom Armstrong had a successful, if fractious, 40-year professional relationship. Well-known Orlando actor and director Rus Blackwell, who has worked with Neal for many years and, with Neal, was one of the founders of the Mad Cow Theatre Company, directs the play.
The coming together of these three talented theater pros was a fortuitous event that Neal opines was destined to occur. According to the highly regarded local performer, “Rus and I had been thinking about doing some sort of one-man show for a long time, but it never came together. When I read Terry’s script, I knew I was born to play this part. I almost felt that it had been written for me.”
Read the whole thing here.