OK, so they weren’t exactly dancing in the aisles at New World Stages the night I attended Rock & Roll Man. However, what the audience was doing to show their love for everything that was flashing before their eyes during the musical’s fast-paced, two-act, wonder-filled 2 hours and 20 minutes was hooting, hollering, whistling, laughing, clapping, snapping their fingers, gyrating in their seats and most surprising of all shedding nostalgic tears of joy, all of this while basking in the glorious glow of rock & roll.
One would think the target audience for this musical, which features the life and times of American Alan Freed (1923-1965), the first radio disc jockey and concert producer in the U.S. and one who promoted mixed-race acts and helped spread the importance of rock music throughout North America and beyond, would be grey-headed seniors like myself.
Of course, they would be dead wrong, for the night I saw the show, the audience was packed with people of all colors and ages. Wondering why there were so many young people, some apparently with their parents, I took a small poll by chatting up the people around me. Their consensus was, just like Danny & The Juniors sang in their 1958 hit, “Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Stay,” “Oh baby, rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay. It will never die; it was meant to be that way. Though I don’t know why I don’t care what people say, Rock ‘n’ Roll is here to stay.”
As the stage lights go up, we see Constantine Maroulis, best known for his Broadway roles in The Wedding Singer (2006), Rock of Ages (2009), and Jekyll and Hyde (2012) as Freed in the turbulent throes of a nightmare. It is the final days of his life. The hook, a clever one at that, is that Freed’s longtime nemesis FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (George Wendt) hounds him to his very end. Hoover appears throughout the play both as commentator and prosecuting attorney, for Freed’s legacy is on trial. Little Richard, beautifully channeled by Rodrick Covington (who almost steals the show in number after number), acts as Freed’s self-appointed defender.
For those who remember Freed, the word “Payola” – a charge he continually denied – generally comes to mind. That aside, there is more to his story, as the play’s three writers, Gary Kupper, Larry Marshak, and Rose Caiola in some 39 short vignettes, tell us.
The audience is taken on a bumpy, rock & roll journey from Freed’s beginnings as a DJ in Cleveland, where he already started desegregating white and black music artists.
Along with the people that fostered Freed’s career – the two major ones (both played compellingly by Joe Pantoliano) being Leo Mintz founder of Record Rendezvous, the Cleveland record store that started Rock n’ Roll; and Morris Levy, cofounder and owner of Roulette Records and founding partner of New York City’s Birdland – we learn of Freed’s affairs, his three marriages, two divorces, four children, and last great concert held at the Brooklyn Paramount, which shattered all previous records for the theater. We also learn of his sad and long-time-coming alcoholic ending; he died from uremia and cirrhosis, on January 20, 1965 in Palm Springs, California, penniless at the age of 43.
Storyline aside, it is the musical’s talented performers who bring down the house while impersonating rock greats, sometimes in solo, other times with the entire cast. Included in this mind-blowing line up are Buddy Holly (John Dewey), Jerry Lee Lewis (James Scheider), Frankie Lyman (William Louis Baily), LaVern Baker (Valisia Lekae), Chuck Berry and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, both played to a tee by Matthew S. Morgan. His rendition of “Great Balls Of Fire” had everybody standing. Covering the various Rock & Roll groups like the Platters, the Cadillacs, and Drifters, as well as doing background singing throughout the musical for the other performers, are Early Clover, A.J. Davis, Jerome Jackson, and Eric B. Turner.
The play ends with a rousing rendition of Chuck Berry’s 1957 hit single, “Rock and Roll Music,” led by Constantine Maroulis and the entire cast. All I saw leaving the theater were happy faces!
