A remarkable Broadway cast is getting back together for two nights. Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Brandon Victor Dixon, Norm Lewis, Adrienne Warren, Brooks Ashmanskas and Amber Iman are among the performers reuniting for a concert presentation of Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed at Lincoln Center.
The performances are Sept. 27 and 28 at 7:30 p.m. at Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center. They are part of Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill Festival, and tickets are being offered on a choose-what-you-pay basis, with a two-ticket limit per person for each show.
The reunion reaches beyond the cast. George C. Wolfe returns as director, Savion Glover as choreographer and Daryl Waters as musical supervisor, arranger and orchestrator. The score includes music and lyrics by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, with the 2016 production’s book by Wolfe drawing on the original book by F.E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles.
That history is the reason Shuffle Along was never simply a revival. The original 1921 musical was a landmark Broadway success created and performed by Black artists. The 2016 show looked back at that production, its creators and its complicated legacy while also asking how Broadway remembers the work that changed it.
The title announces the complication. This is Shuffle Along and also a show about Shuffle Along, about the making of a sensation and what followed. Wolfe’s production used the past as material rather than pretending that a 1921 musical could simply be lifted intact into the present.
Bringing the company back in concert form puts unusual emphasis on the score and performers. McDonald, Mitchell, Porter, Dixon and Warren are not merely a collection of famous names assembled for a gala. Their connection to the 2016 production gives the evening the character of a genuine reunion.
The setting adds another layer. Rose Theater sits within Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the event is part of a festival devoted to the history and cultural legacy of San Juan Hill, the neighborhood displaced by the construction of Lincoln Center. A musical about Broadway history is therefore being presented inside another ongoing conversation about whose cultural history gets preserved in New York.
Lincoln Center lists the run time at approximately two hours and 15 minutes and recommends the performance for ages 8 and older. The program also includes Darius de Haas, JC Montgomery, Arbender Robinson and Christian Dante White, along with an ensemble of returning performers.
For people who missed the 2016 production, this is not a full Broadway restaging. For people who saw it, that may be part of the attraction. Ten years later, the material returns stripped of some machinery but carrying an extra decade of history.
