When the Fats Waller musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’” opens on Sunday, June 19 at Barrington Stage Company’s mainstage, the Boyd-Quinson Stage, it will present a very different kind of show from the one many of us remember from its original 1978 Broadway productions. That original presented five performers, all intended for stardom: Nell Carter, Andre DeShields, Armelia McQueen, Charlayne Woodard, and Ken Page. It was conceived and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr, a very white artist.
This time around it is being helmed by Jeffrey L. Page, an associate artist with Barrington Stage and a black artist with a different set of sensibilities. “I believe that this show is similar to going to an art installation, a museum curated exhibition,” Jeffrey Page said in our chat about the show. “The narrative comes through the culmination of these works we are putting together, how they relate in a dialectic. When you look at these songs as if they are independent works of art and see them in proximity, what they do is they hang there close together. It’s a picture of their time.”
Maltby’s original production, which so many people adored, was a collection of Black stereotypes typically found in a Warner Brothers Hattie McDaniel film musical of the early 1940s. This edition won’t bear that same resemblance but rather, according to choreographer/director Page, “This has to do with the masks we all wear in order to survive, to walk out the door, feeling our strengths.”
“I look at it as a play, not a revue,” Page said. “It opens with the lyric ‘No one to talk with, all by myself…’ and represents Fats Waller in his many aspects.” Waller didn’t just write music for Black people but worked to expand the Black experience to all people. The show includes such influential songs as “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” “Two Sleepy People,” “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie,” and “Honeysuckle Rose,” along with Waller specialties like “Your Feet’s Too Big,” and “This Joins is Jumpin’.”
The production shows the influence of Chicago on his work. “Soon after arriving in Chicago,” Page said, “Waller was grabbed by gangsters, taken to a party for Al Capone, and he played for hours, boozed up, and was well paid for it. After this he needed a bottle of VAT 69 scotch to perform. Does this indicate that his ability was stripped from him? Not likely.”
There are thirty-three pieces in the show; each one is specific to its moment. For example “Black and Blue” shows a “decimated Black soul. The Reefer song is a protest song, a middle finger to the administration.”
Page draws parallels with the Waller material to other creative artists we all know. “With a lot of Shakespeare or the Greek plays, we have to figure out how to interpret them and find a new understanding, There are new ways to put this show in front of a new world. I keep asking myself how is it necessary now? I think theater is really important, that it jumps into us without needing to convince us and it sort of rearranges our internal furniture.”
Unlike the original in which Ken Page resembled Waller and represented him to the audience, this Page’s work shows no Waller on stage. “He is all of these people and all of them are him.”
Following the opening Page returns to the revival of “1776,” which he helmed in Cambridge, for its presentation at GEVA Theatre in upstate New York prior to its opening next season on Broadway. He also spends time at Jacob’s Pillow for a dance-theatre program. “I’m seeing ‘1776’ a bit differently now,” he said, “so its back into the studio to clarify and refine things.” As for this show in Pittsfield, he related, “I saw it in Indianapolis as a kid. Now, these songs are inside my bones. There’s just not enough time—ten days—to rehearse Waller’s songs properly. The cast, they have all been troopers, all the staging, choreography and my lectures about the show and its meaning. We had to replace one actor after we started work because he was offered a bigger contract and couldn’t make the time work, so it’s been difficult, but I believe the audience will have a great experience here.”
The show plays at the Boyd-Quinson Mainstage, 30 Union Street in Pittsfield, through July 9. Information and tickets can be found here.
