A Man, A Magic, A Music: a marvel

The first thing this show has going for it is the source material: 50’s-60’s R&B. In my books you can’t do better than that.That’s my Shakespeare in a beat-box — the whole range of human emotion is there, coupled with incomparable grooves and soulful musicianship.

Next you’ve got lead man Melvin Brown who sings like multi-phonic angel, like the R&B artists he’s impersonating, and like himself. And he sings with his body, by which I mean he dances. It’s all one thing.

The tunes are strung together in an autobiographical narrative that begins in Cincinnati in the forties. The turning points in Brown’s life are usually coupled with a recognizable hit from the R&B canon. Brown has a way of introducing these numbers as if each one were paradigmatic shift in human history. And I think for him they were. His personal history is a refresher, from one man’s perspective, of the African-American experience of the last half century. Brown never gets precious about any of this material. He stays lifted, always moving forward with a smile. Still, between his personal memoirs and achingly beautiful songs like “Unchained Melody” or “These Arms of Mine” the harshness of his experience hit me in the gut by several times.

The rest of the time I was singing or clapping along with the rest of the house. The show alternates in this way, between story and song, for a while. But just when I settled into this comfortable pattern, something changed. As Brown moved into the 70s and 80s, the detail in his personal biography deepened and the revelations became startling. New and completely unexpected angles on what a song and dance man could be had me thinking “Oh my…” and sometimes, “Holy shit…” Brown reveals a lot of himself. Really more than I was expecting. But I don’t want to say too much. Go and see for yourself. You will see. Really.

For more information and to discuss the show (and beat up on Alex) go here.