Review: SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF Offers an Insightful Look at the Jazz Icon's Remarkable Life

John Douglas Thompson gives a tour de force multiple-character solo performance in SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. It is easy to see why the New York Times described Thompson as one of the most compelling classical stage actors of his generation after witnessing his remarkable ability to totally transform himself into three very distinct and richly defined characters: jazz great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, his mob-connected and career-long manager Joe Glaser, and fellow jazz musician Miles Davis.

It's March 1971 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and Louis Armstrong has just played one of the final performances of his extraordinary career. Unwinding backstage, Thompson commands every moment of the play as he recounts events that transformed Armstrong into the world-famous "Satchmo" from his poor beginnings in New Orleans through his tempestuous marriage to fourth wife Lucille (the first dark-skinned Cotton Club showgirl), and his love-hate relationship with his manager, Joe Glaser, the man who saved Armstrong from the mob and then directed his career for 40 years. Thompson brilliantly allows the audience to comprehend both sides of the relationship by portraying each man telling their own side of the story simultaneously.

When playing Satchmo, Thompson displays the physicality of the 70-year old jazz icon from his hunched-over walk to his great difficulty breathing, often needing to resort to an oxygen tank when unable to catch his breath. And of course there is that scratchy well-known voice and ever-present trumpet, handled with great care as Thompson lovingly cleans it while telling his stories. Warm lighting designed by Kevin Adams includes muted lights around the three large dressing room mirrors at the back of the realistic dressing room set designed by Lee Savage.

When the lights shift and a much cooler aura envelops the stage, the mirrors become windows looking out to other buildings as Thompson embodies his white and Jewish manager Joe Glaser by changing his stance, accent, bearing, and overall mannerisms. There is no momentary character overlap - the change is instantaneous, complete and totally awe-inspiring. The same is true when Thompson steps into a red spotlight as he becomes jazz great Miles Davis whose attitude about dealing with white society is greatly different than Armstrong's all-inclusive nature. The "windows" are then covered in blinds as if speaking with Davis in his living room. The truly remarkable set adds magic as well as authenticity to each of Thompson's portrayals.

Armstrong's legacy is a very rich one. He changed music and created the language of jazz that we all know and recognize today. "For many white people in America," playwright Terry Teachout says, "he was very likely the first black person they loved. He was someone they saw in movies, on television, and before that heard on the radio - someone who came into their homes. And that was an immensely important thing for a black man to have done."

But life on the road was not easy for Satchmo and his band, playing 300 nights a year for audiences in hotels where he could not stay or restaurants where he was not welcome to sit and eat. Most meals had to be eaten on the bus, brought in by his white manager or purchased at grocery stores where blacks were allowed to shop. Satchmo laughingly shares sneaking through back doors into restaurant kitchens where black cooks would prepare expensive meals for him, which he had to eat standing up amid the kitchen clutter. It was an unfair way to live, being famous and yet treated as a second-class citizen. But you did what you had to do to survive and succeed, and Armstrong was a master at doing just that with a little help from his friend Joe Glaser. But when Thompson steps into the red spotlight and becomes Miles Davis, we hear a very different take on race relations, both brutally honest and bone-chilling.

Directed with great insight and a sure hand by Gordon Edelstein, SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF offers an insightful look into the private Armstrong, who apparently swore like a trooper and knew how to hold a grudge. "The fact that Satchmo (as he loved to call himself) had two sides to his personality doesn't mean that the public man was somehow less real than the private one," shares Teachout. "Like all geniuses, Armstrong was complicated, and that complexity was part of what made his music so beautiful and profound."

And thanks to John Douglas Thompson tour-de-force performance, you will walk away feeling as if you have just met the multi-faceted man who changed the world by playing the music in his head through his horn.

SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF continues at the Lovelace Studio Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, through Sunday, June 7, 2015 on Tuesday - Friday at 8:30 PM; Saturdays at 3:30 PM, 8:30 PM; Sundays at 2:30 PM, 7:30 PM. Running time is 90 minutes with no intermission.

Tickets are $30 - $50 and are available at www.thewallis.org, by calling 310-746-4000, or in person at The Wallis Ticket Services located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

This production contains strong, adult language. Suggested for mature high school students and up.

Photos by T Charles Erickson

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