From Rolling Stone.com-Inside the Making of the Temptations Broadway Musical
‘We’re Bringing the Truth’: Inside the Making of the Temptations Broadway Musical
Cast, director and writer of the Broadway show about the life and often crazy times of the Temptations talk researching the story, meeting Motown legends — and that onstage bong
The incoming Broadway musical about the enduring music and volatile career of the Temptations features many elements associated with a prestige show. There’s a name director, an award-winning book writer, a cast whose collective resume includes stints in shows like Hamilton and Chicago, and a score overflowing with pop songs that are engrained in the culture.Then there’s the bong.The prop, complete with whiffs of artificial smoke, appears during a scene in which the Motown group parties together on the road later in their career. “That’s funny — that’s rock & roll!” says Jeremy Pope, cracking up at the mention of the paraphernalia during a pre-rehearsal meal near the Imperial Theatre, where Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations opens Friday night. Pope plays falsetto-gifted Eddie Kendricks, while Ephraim Sykes, his dining buddy, portrays rough-voiced but troubled David Ruffin [[he even wears glasses, as Ruffin did). Sykes laughs too before getting serious. “Drinking and drugs were part of their sound,” Sykes, the son of a preacher, says. “But then it becomes a crutch. There are a lot of things you have to look out for.”
Since it opened in California nearly two years ago,
Ain’t Too Proud has been accumulating word of mouth far more positive than that of your average jukebox musical. Based on
The Temptations, the 1988 memoir by surviving Temp Otis Williams [[co-written with Patricia Romanowski), it packs in everything one would expect in the genre: the story of the rise, fall and redemption of a classic pop act, recreations of famous choreography, and a playlist that, in this case, encompasses the many gems and stylistic twists of the Temptations’ music. From their first hit, “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” to one of their last, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,”
Ain’t Too Proud jams in “My Girl,” “Don’t Look Back,” “Get Ready,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “[[I Know) I’m Losing You” and “Just My Imagination [[Running Away with Me),” among many others. Audiences who walk in humming the names of those songs will probably walk out humming even them
more.
But explaining some of the buzz around the show,
Ain’t Too Proud doesn’t shy away from drama — the internal dissent, drug and alcohol abuse and personal sacrifices [[including on-the-road affairs, marital collapses, and the death of a child) that bedeviled and tore apart the group. “People have said, ‘That’s the best
play I’ve ever seen,’” says James Harkness, who plays the late Paul Williams.
When the “jukebox musical” phrase is brought up, Derrick Baskin, who plays Otis Williams [[no relation to Paul), stiffens every so slightly. “We refer to our show more as a ‘biography musical,’” he says. “With jukebox musicals, you have the catalog of an artist and a fictitious story. But our story is true. What we’re bringing is truth.” For an audience accustomed to much fluffier or more escapist pop musicals — think Mamma Mia! or Jimmy Buffett’s Escape to Margaritaville — the question then becomes: Can they handle the truth?Ain’t Too Proud was first presented in the summer of 2017 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California, before it settled into residences in three other cities on its way to New York. But all that prep doesn’t mean the work is done. On a late February morning, the cast, creative team and R&B-trained band have assembled in a rehearsal space near Times Square for a run-through. No sets, few props — just a dressed-down cast [[wool hats and a Run-DMC T-shirt), their knapsacks and work boots tossed on a window sill. Using a three-ring binder, the assistant director follows along word for word to ensure everyone remembers his or her lines — which they largely do, aside from a slip-up or two.Even in such a rec-room setting, the show’s ambitions come into view. With the Otis Williams character as its leading man and narrator, Ain’t Too Proud rolls out the story of how the “classic five” lineup of the group [[Otis Williams, Paul Williams, Kendricks, Ruffin and Melvin Franklin) came together in Detroit, clicked with the help of Motown’s Berry Gordy and Smokey Robinson, and had a phenomenal wave of hits before drugs, alcohol, temperaments and creative-direction struggles spelled the end of the Temptations’ most iconic lineup. [[A latter-day version of the group still performs today, with Otis Williams its only surviving original member.)The show also links the Temptations to social and political events circling around them, from civil rights struggles and bigotry to a music business not always keen on allowing the group to write its own material or express anti-war sentiments. During this winter run-through, Martin Luther King’s image isn’t seen on the screen behind them, as it does in the full production, but “I Wish It Would Rain,” one of Ruffin’s showcases, follows news of King’s assassination. “No one talked about them in a political way, or how their politics tied in with the politics of the nation,” says playwright Dominique Morisseau, observing on the sidelines, script in hand.Four years ago, Morisseau was pitched on the idea of writing a Temptations musical by producers Tom Hulce [[the former Animal House and Amadeus actor, now a successful Broadway producer) and his partner Ira Pittelman, who had previously teamed to produce the Green Day-inspired American Idiot musical. Morisseau felt an immediate connection to the idea. She’d grown up in Detroit, with parents who played Motown records around the house, and she went on to write a trilogy of plays, The Detroit Project, one of which was set in that city in 1967. “When I was reading Otis’ book, I said, ‘This is every artist I know right now,’” she says during a break. “We’re all trying to figure out where do we stand with our art and our identity in this nation? Do we use our art to address these things or will it harm us?”Standing beside her, Des McAnuff, the award-winning director of shows like Jersey Boys, The Who’s Tommy and the recent, closed Donna Summer musical, nods along. “It’s a lens for us to look at our time and see how much things have and haven’t changed,” he says. “We weren’t thinking that way four years ago.”“There’s something aggressively current about this story now,” Morisseau nods. “It’s actually scary.”
