Motown the Musical - My Review

[kenneth]

I had the pleasure of enjoying “Motown the Musical” last night at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Our seats were great, Row P, Left Orchestra, which sounds far back but isn’t in that venue which holds 2,703, seats. The sight and sound of the stage was perfect. The audience was ready for the show. At the first sounds of the orchestra opening with “Get Ready” done in a big, bombastic style, some of the people were already waving their arms and dancing in their seats to the music. Clearly, this was an audience who wanted to love “Motown.”

The story is framed by the “Motown 25" event of 1983 and starts out with Berry refusing to attend, and attempts to persuade him to go by Suzanne de Passe and Smokey Robinson. This works well as a touch point to then go back and trace the history of Motown over its [[then) 25 year history.

The trajectory of the sketchy story has already been discussed at length in other reviews so I won’t spend a lot of time on it. Suffice to say that this is, after all, a jukebox musical, and as such, isn’t much on story. A few scenes were set in young Berry Gordy, Jr.’s home, and at the Flame Bar in Detroit, to establish Gordy’s beginnings as a second rate boxer, record store owner and [[in the words of one of his sisters, I think it was Esther) a “29 year old loser.” But once “Motown” entered the storyline, you had to either know the Motown history or be awfully quick to catch references, as references were all you got, to what we aficionados consider milestones in the life of this amazing company.

Some liberties were taken with the timing of events. Historical events were referred to briefly via the use of film or video projected on stage.

In my opinion, the male singers fared far better than the female singers. Outstanding especially was Reed L. Shannon as the young Michael Jackson. [[Apparently, he alternates in the role, as well as playing Little Stevie Wonder and young young Berry Gordy, Jr., with two other actors.) In the LA reviews, Leon Outlaw, Jr., is the young actor who is praised in this role, but I can’t imagine anyone sang better [[or more like Michael) than did Shannon. Shannon was simply incredible especially in his rendition of “Who’s Loving You,” which I have always felt was one of Michael’s most outstanding performances.

Also worthy were Julius Thomas III as Berry Gordy, Jesse Nager as Smokey, and Rodney Earl Jackson, Jr. [[an understudy) as Marvin Gaye. Thomas as Gordy had a few original songs penned for the show, including one called “It’s What’s in the Grooves that Counts.” He had a good, strong voice with a lot of nuance. Nager as Smokey emulated the singer’s style and stylings, and acted well the role of the guy who went along to get along. Jackson as Gaye seemed sluggish and out of character in the first act, but by the second act when he sang the more evocative songs of Gaye such as “What’s Going On” seemed more comfortable in the role.

I think the problem with the female singers was they all sang the same way. Every female singer, whether it be Ross, Reeves, Gladys Knight [[ever so briefly) or even Mary Wells was presented as a gospel style belter, as if everyone connected with the show grew up on Whitney Houston. While “Dancing in the Streets” and “Please Mr. Postman” may not have suffered by this type of treatment [[though even Martha Reeves knew when and how to be subtle even in some of her thriving dance classics), hearing Diane Ross belt out “Reach Out and Touch” just sounded strange. While the use of this style for “Bye Bye Baby” by Mary Wells may have been justified, none of Wells’ soft, breathy vocals were used to any degree on “My Guy” which was presented as [[yet) another showstopping anthem. In addition, all the female singers had similar tones, and to me, were virtually interchangeable. I felt they totally lacked any connection to the real performers of these classic tunes.

I think the male actors fared better acting wise as well, although Allison Semmes was the only female character [[Diane) to have anything resembling a part. The Gordy sisters [[Esther, Anna, and I think Loucye was mentioned as well) were treated more as a Greek Chorus, just commenting on the action, most notably in the early scenes as Berry was trying to establish himself.

But to me the worst case of miscasting was Semmes as Diane. Semmes had none of Diane’s subtlety, breath control or appeal. As mentioned, she belted out every song at the top of her lungs. While she had a pleasant voice, it had none of Ross’s taste or appeal in any way, shape or form. There was a long, extended version of “Reach Out and Touch,” performed as if it was part of Ross’s Las Vegas act, in which two [[real) members of the audience sang along with Diane, just as [[I believe) she did in her concerts. Then, “Diane” asked the entire audience to join hands and raise them as they sang along. The lady to my left, a stranger, immediately grabbed my hand, getting into the spirit of the moment. It was moving and touching, but it certainly didn’t evoke Diane Ross.

But as far as acting, Semmes as Diane evoked nothing of the real Ross. She was short and a bit voluptuous. She was played as a vixen or a seductress. She neither had the look of Diane nor Ross’s charming awkwardness which she displayed in her early days [[the flashing eyes, the kind of “geeky” movements on stage which people grew to love about her). Gordy tried to portray Ross as a Diva, and no doubt she is [[and maybe even was at the time), but those efforts came across as self-serving in order to promote Gordy’s own sterling character. I think the character in “Dream Girls” was much closer to the real Diane than this plastic imitation.

None of the early stars got any mention. No Satintones, no Mabel John, no Eddie Holland prior to being a part of H-D-H. Mickey Stevenson was introduced very briefly but no mention of Kim Weston, nor Brenda Holloway. But I found it most disconcerting that Tammi Terrell didn’t get one mention, and was irritated that one of the most beloved of the Gaye-Terrell duets “You’re All I Need to Get By” was hijacked as a love song between Berry and Diane. [[Diane, of course, also performed “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” but of course the character came by the right to perform that one legitimately.)

Some of the tunes were awkwardly shoe horned into the plot. In addition to “You’re All I Need” becoming a love duet for Diane and Berry, “I Hear a Symphony” was sung by Diane to Berry in bed after a liaison in which he was impotent and couldn’t make love to her [[!). Why this was written this way is anyone’s guess. Needless to say, that plot point was never mentioned again.

The book was clearly written by Gordy as it portrayed him as a hero, except in the briefest of mentions. He was presented as this wonderful paternal figure whose ungrateful children all left him as soon as they could get more money. While this can be seen as true in the most general sense, there was no mention made of how Gordy controlled or manipulated his artists, how he denied them royalties, how they were treated as interchangeable parts, etc. Of course, the old adage is that if you live the longest, you get to be the one to write the history, and that seems to have been proven here.

Most notably omitted from the plot was the fact that Gordy was married much of the time he was with Ross. Ross's first marriage was also omitted entirely and her children were never mentioned, including [[of course) the one which Gordy fathered. Gordy's foray into films is dealt with as a major plot device but only "Lady Sings the Blues" is discussed. "Mahogany" is mentioned once while supposedly it was in production, but its critical failure is ignored. "The Wiz" isn't mentioned at all. Gordy's failures as a film producer are attributed to his lack of money to play with "the big boys" [["Hollywood taste on a Detroit budget" is one of the lines that refers to this), rather than his poor choice of projects and what many consider as the terrible miscasting of Ross as Dorothy in "The Wiz" which certainly tanked her movie career for quite some time. Florence's demise and death is also completely ignored, which seems unbelievable as that was one of Motown's very early tragedies.

I think a lot of credit was taken, not entirely deserved, for Motown being leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. If anything, I think at the time Motown was criticized for being out of touch with the move towards greater civil rights. While certainly Motown did enormous things for people of color with talent, they resisted any political statements or recordings until far, far into the movement when [[finally) they started releasing music [[usually produced by either Norman Whitfield or Marvin Gaye) such as “War,” “Cloud 9,” and so on. There was a brief sequence where the Black Forum label was mentioned, yet do even most Motown fans know about this label which lived all too briefly in the late 60s? While Motown in general can be given much credit for what it did for civil rights, mainly by bringing black music into the mainstream, I think political statements were outside Motown’s realm and really not what this company, and its music, was all about.

All in all, though, I have to say the audience loved the show. To someone like myself as intimately acquainted with Motown it’s hard to enjoy it as pure entertainment. For that I’d have to have all the plot points stripped out of it and just see performers sing the songs. While no one can say there’s anything blatantly untrue here in the story presented, it clearly is only one side of the story. I suppose it’s too much to expect that anyone else will come along to write another side of the story, but that seems to be something that would at least satisfy those harder core “truthers" such as myself.