Louis Armstrong’s innovative musicianship and incredible charisma as trumpeter and vocalist would lead him from the early days of jazz in his native New Orleans to five decades of international stardom. A Wonderful World tells the story of Armstrong’s blazing musical career from the perspective of his four wives, who each had a unique impact on his life.
A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, starring a terrific James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton) as the legendary Satchmo, opens on Broadway tonight at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, and if it doesn’t escape every pitfall of the jukebox musical, it certainly comes closer than most. Wonderful World is too expansive in chronological scope to delve too deeply into the crucial question of what made Armstrong such an incomparable figure in the history of American music, but with Iglehart and a fine supporting cast of excellent singer-actresses portraying Armstrong’s four wives – Dionne Figgins as Daisy Parker, Jennie Harney-Fleming as Lil Hardin, Kim Exum as Alpha Smith and Darlesia Cearcy as Lucille Wilson – the musical rarely gives us enough time to ponder what’s being left out. What we’re seeing on stage is too entertaining.
Armstrong repeatedly says jazz is about “the choices you make in between the notes.” Book writer Aurin Squire and conceivers Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw toggle between conventional bio-musical choices and more challenging ones, keeping A Wonderful World lively and interesting. Shying away from an unblemished portrait of Armstrong and instead acknowledging his womanizing and self-involvement, A Wonderful World makes space for a version of Black artistry that confronts the complexities of artists as humans, and how the world around them may fail them.
2020 | Regional (US) |
Colony Theatre World Premiere Regional (US) |
2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Videos