The questions surrounding the return engagement of "I Wish You Love" did not concern performance. Dennis Spears, who again plays Nat King Cole in Dominic Taylor's limited musical biography of Cole, has his subject down pat. Spears inhabits the smooth crooner and pioneering TV host with a cool totality, from his slicked-back, broad-smiling visage to his unique phrasing. And Spears looks even more Cole-like in black-and-white, courtesy of three TV monitors above the stage that show him live as he performs.
The worry was over the script. In its premiere earlier this year at Penumbra Theatre before it went on to successful runs at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center and the Hartford (Conn.) Stage, "Love" had a first act that ran a little long. It was larded with beautiful songs that did not always propel the narrative forward.
Playwright Taylor has cut a couple of numbers from the show. He also has filled out the story a little more in this revision, which opened Friday in St. Paul. The result is a tighter, more nuanced and genuinely more interesting production that shows Cole as a human being caught, like the rest of the nation during the 1950s and 60s, in crucibles of change.
"Love" centers on Cole, whose best-known songs include "It's Only A Paper Moon," "Mona Lisa" and "Unforgettable" (the last number is not included in the show). For a brief period in the mid-1950s, he hosted a network TV show, the first by an African-American. His show coincided with civil rights activism by a young Martin Luther King, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell and others (news bulletins by actor Michael Tezla as an Edward R. Murrow-esque anchor gives the show its historical context). Viewers in the South were incensed to see Cole on TV, and sent him hate mail. They also vented to the network, which, when confronted with such hostility, had to choose between courage and cowardice. Will they stand by their first black host?
The show feels like a time capsule, in some ways, of '50s hipsterdom. For example, we live in an age of backbeat, when hip hop influences what we expect to hear and how we hear it. Cole's music is pre-rock 'n' roll. The accompaniment, pre-recorded by Sanford Moore, consists mostly of smooth piano and bass. Spears makes it snappy, delivering with a mellifluous voice on such numbers as "Get Your Kicks on Route 66" and "Nature Boy."
Spears, as star, carries the show on his shoulders, but he is surrounded by a sharp company, including Kevin D. West as smoothly colorful bassist Oliver Moore, and Jeffrey Prince as youthful, eager-beaver guitarist Eric Berryman. Prince makes his character, who is caught in the turmoil of America's transformation from its racist past to its promising future, into a sympathetic, wounded soul.
It's a nice performance by a young man in a company that makes this "Love" a study in composure and reserve in the face of traumatic challenges.
