Jelly's Last Jam Off-Broadway Reviews

The book has unsolvable problems, but then so do most musicals, until they are solved — or bulldozed. Even then, few give you a first act like this one, or a subject — the creation of American music in the furious cauldron of race — as hot. I mean hot as entertainment, of course, but also, even hotter, as history.

The score is built around Jelly Roll Morton’s own music — with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and some additional music by Luther Henderson — and it serves as a showcase for Morton’s genius as well as the talents of this production’s starry cast. Jason Michael Webb, the guest musical director, fills the theater with sound and energy, making the first act feel like a series of dramatic crescendos, each outdoing the last.

Playing the bejeweled angel, Porter is, well, Porter: flamboyant, loud and often downright obnoxious. In the beginning, he nearly wipes the stage with Christopher, who enters with his back to the audience and doesn’t seem to know that he’s being radically upstaged. Fortunately, there’s genius in that approach to playing Morton, who never seems to care what we think of him. Porter demands our attention, Christopher earns it in a slow-burn performance that ends in Morton’s grand self-immolation.

The show’s physical production is equally first-rate. Clint Ramos’ nightclub set is dominated by an art-deco style door that is both inventive and terrifying, if you look closely; its only drawback is that there may not be quite enough dance floor for this unusually large ensemble. Dede Ayite’s costumes, as is consistently the case, are both stunning and period-appropriate (although I suspect Porter’s gender-bending outfit may have come from his own closet) and Adam Honore’s lighting design truly shines brightly. (The sound design, by Megumi Katayama, does need a bit of fine-tuning.)

During the lengthy first act and the short second act, Morton’s biography is sketchy in large part to keep the Morton-Birkenhead songs coming—Birkenhead’s clever, often effectively boisterous lyrics neatly enhancing Morton’s irresistible melodies. One title—“That’s How You Jazz”—stands for the triumph of the others. The jazzing that prevails is infectious, especially in the ensemble numbers, although Birkenhead’s words are often lost in the exhilarating shuffle.