Six-Time Tony Winner Returns to the Great White(?) Way
March 9, 2016 9:26 AM   Subscribe

Shocking As It Is to Believe, the Theater May Be in a New Golden Age One reason: Audra McDonald, Broadway’s greatest voice, is back.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero (16 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for posting this.

I'm married to a Broadway fanatic. We are seeing both Shuffle Along and Hamilton in early June, which my husband sagely booked ages ago.

The fact this stars BOTH Audra McDonald and Billy Porter has him virtually vibrating with excitement, and it's something he describes as a "bucket list" opportunity. I must say the more I've dipped into McDonald's oeuvre, the more infectious that excitement becomes.

Ladies and gentlemen, Audra McDonald.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:32 AM on March 9, 2016


That is just fantastic, but at discount seats above $175 I'm probably missing this golden age.
posted by sammyo at 10:33 AM on March 9, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh god...try paying for even the cheapest seats (which we have) in Canadian dollars.

*shudders*
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:46 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


And now I will take this opportunity to dive into as many Audra McDonald videos as I can find.

Again.


Thank you so much!
posted by blurker at 10:55 AM on March 9, 2016


I'm coming to the conclusion there's a whole chunk of musical theatre history missing between In Dahomey (1903) and Shuffle Along (1922). Shuffle Along is so important for many reasons, not least because it showed a love story between two African American characters, at a time when vaudeville was at its peak racist (and that's really saying something).

The narrative of Show Boat as the beginning of serious musicals has for a long time written out African American performance practices, performers, and the writers themselves. Florence Mills is an extraordinary woman - There is no record of her performance, no video of her dancing or any recording of her voice. There are a lot of photos, in fact, she was the first African-American woman to appear in Vogue, and was one of only two African-Americans to appear in the magazine in the entire decade of the 1920s (the other being actor Paul Robeson). Florence was able to navigate the often extremely racist responses to her performance (many of the reviews of her performance describe her as a bird or a strange animal). In 1924 she headlined the Palace Theatre, the biggest booking for any vaudeville performer. In 1926, she performed in Blackbirds Revue, which toured to Paris and London where the then Prince of Wales was so taken with the show that he attended twenty performances.

There's quite a bit now recovering some of this - Bodies in Dissent has lots on In Dahomey, and Todd Decker has published a massive range of material: from journal articles (paywall) to books like Who Should Sing Old Man River? and the excellent biography of Show Boat which considers how the musical 'performs race'.

It's extremely convenient to say ah yes Oklahoma is the first integrated (in terms of dance/drama/song) musical, and makes the form a more serious art. I think one of the major reasons this narrative becomes so popular is it makes the form of the musical 'white/European' rather than 'largely stolen from, informed by, complicated by, invented by African American musical theatre'. Eric Lott's Love and Theft addresses this tension, between admiration on the one hand (i.e. this stuff is really good) and 'we will now pass that off as our own'.

There are a few of us nerdy musical theatre historians working very hard to uncover this period. I'm coming to NYC to present a paper on Hamilton in June, so the real question is which kidney do I sell to see it?
posted by Augenblick at 11:00 AM on March 9, 2016 [9 favorites]


This article's tease line makes it sound like McDonald has been on hiatus from Broadway for ages. She just won a Tony in 2014 -- she's barely been off the stage for any length of time. I'm glad to hear that Broadway is doing well these days, but this is a peculiar frame upon which to hang this welcome profile of one of our best living stage performers.
posted by hippybear at 11:03 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Audra McDonald episode of Side By Side is fucking hilarious.
posted by kmz at 11:08 AM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Her rendition of It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:09 AM on March 9, 2016


Not sure why all the hype. It has been clear for some time that Broadway is having the best year it has had in a very long time, with high priced tickets selling, and many people trying to get seats for the many shows there are.
posted by Postroad at 11:13 AM on March 9, 2016


What a wonderful picture of McDonald.

After being a casual musical theater-goer for the past 15 years, I became completely obsessed last year with Hedwig, and especially the chance to see John Cameron Mitchell embody her so completely. I've since thrown myself into seeing a lot more shows (including straight plays), and there really is a lot of great stuff out there now. It's an expensive hobby, though.
posted by Mavri at 11:18 AM on March 9, 2016


I saw Audra McDonald as Sarah in Ragtime in 1998. I was 10 years old. It was amazing and my mind was boggled. (She's also responsible for one of my favorite Hams4Ham, Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday as Maria Reynolds, singing Say No To This).
posted by ChuraChura at 11:46 AM on March 9, 2016 [6 favorites]


Every time I see Audra McDonald's name, I mentally precede it with "national treasure".
posted by pxe2000 at 12:21 PM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Audra McDonald

On our tenth anniversary, my wife and I went to see Porgy and Bess with Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald. The two of them together doing duets... man, they just shook the rafters and brought us to tears. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. It was an incredible experience. They're both fantastic.
posted by zarq at 1:43 PM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]


Chura Chura, I too saw her in Ragtime and was absolutely blown. the. fuck. away. A peak theater experience. (I was, er, older than 10 at the time.)
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:18 PM on March 9, 2016


And this is exactly right: "Her voice functions as one with her acting; her singing makes emotion audible in the same way a blush makes it visible."
posted by GrammarMoses at 5:20 PM on March 9, 2016


Thank you.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:36 PM on March 22, 2016


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