A group of friends rejoice as they gather at an old haunt that launches Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust Road, a revue of the composer’s music, at the York Theatre Company.
For four decades in the mid-twentieth century, Hoagy Carmichael’s melodies enchanted audiences around the world. Despite massive social upheavals, including the Great Depression and World War II, his songs endured. Many, like Stardust, Georgia on My Mind, and Heart and Soul, became classics. The co-creators of Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust Road lead the audience through those turbulent times as a group of gifted singers and dancers reprise a repertoire of hits that ultimately led to his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971.
As conceived by director Susan H. Schulman, choreographer Michael Lichtefeld, and music director Lawrence Yurman, with the help of Carmichael’s son, Hoagy Bix Carmichael, Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust Road loosely ties together the composer’s music from the 1920s through the 1950s with a storyline that initially centers on a fictional Stardust Roadhouse, somewhere in Indiana, where Carmichael was born and raised. The show’s charms don’t depend on a tight script; rather, it’s a revue of dazzling songs and dances with a central character who loosely parallels the composer himself.
Gloria (Kayla Jenerson) and Wallace (Mike Schwitter) sing about love.
It’s the 1920s, and Stardust Roadhouse has just been sold by Max (Dion Simmons Grier), the owner-bartender (and Carmichael surrogate). With the help of Clara (Sara Esty), a waitress, he glances around the room for the last time, when his friends Wallace (Mike Schwitter), Gloria (Kayla Jenerson), Buster (Markcus Blair), and Bessie (Danielle Herbert) surprise him with a farewell party. Bessie, a flapper/temptress with a sultry voice and provocative dress, is alluring as she sings “Come Easy, Go Easy Love.”
These friends form a vibrant ensemble, the men flirting with the women as they move, carefree, across the Roadhouse floor. When Charlie (Cory Lingner), another one of the friends, enters the Roadhouse and joins the party, things rise to a new artistic level. The men and women who bid Max and the Roadhouse farewell are not just partygoers, but gifted virtuosi, each of whom demonstrates a particular talent. As the action moves from the almost-shuttered Roadhouse to other venues, the friends provide continuity and, together with Max, serve as guides to the musical journey through time.
Bessie (Danielle Herbert) is a seductive, soulful chanteuse. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Charlie and Clara sing and dance, flirting with each other. They transition at the end of the song “Lazy River” to donning tap shoes, and their Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers–like tap routine at the Roadhouse is a highlight. The couple team up for other genres, and Esty also shows off her ballet artistry.
As the setting changes in Part II to Max’s second bar, Club Old Man Harlem (and elsewhere in later decades), Bessie shows herself a gifted singer and comedienne. Herbert brings an appealing earthiness to her character as she makes unashamedly forthright overtures to Max and Wallace, who explain her behavior in “Bessie Couldn’t Help It.” Schwitter as Wallace shows off an exceptionally lyrical tenor in his Part I serenade, “Here for Love,” and Blair’s Buster is comical as a naïve young man in “Gonna Get a Girl.”
Part III takes place during World War II at a USO canteen, where Max, now an Army sergeant, is a host. His friends all serve in different branches of the armed forces, and the women are entertainers. Max waxes nostalgic with two solos, “Rogue River Valley” and the inimitable “Georgia on My Mind,” whereas Charlie sings “Can’t Get Indiana off My Mind.”
A jubilant Charlie (Cory Lingner) dances his way through a song at Max’s club.
As a casualty of the war, Max is notably absent in Part IV, where Buster’s Hollywood Club Heart and Soul (note the hit of the same name) reflects the upbeat postwar mood. Alex Allison’s innovative costume designs enhance every act, but in this scene the royal blue gowns worn by Bessie, Gloria, and Carla are particularly stunning.
Although the musical’s story line is whimsical and rather thin, the fairy-tale-like nostalgia for times-and-entertainments-past give Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust Roadhouse an endearing quality. That quality peaks in Part V, where the deceased Max (or angel Max) works his way across the floor of the revived Roadhouse, now under Carla’s ownership. He sees a photo of himself, in uniform, atop the piano, and watches his friends celebrate the reopening. It’s as if, despite his passing, Max does walk with music, as the lyrics of “I Walk with Music” suggests: “And that song will lead me to where you are (the women sing)/lead me to where you find that star (the men sing)….”
The storyline begins and ends with Max, but parallels, in part, that of Carmichael, who also, despite death, continues to lead to that musical star.
The York Theatre production of Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust Road plays through Dec. 31 at the York Theatre Company at the Theatre at St. Jeans (150 E. 76th St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 Tuesday through Friday; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and Friday through Sunday. For tickets and more information, call more information, (212) 935-5820 or visit yorktheatre.org.
