'A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical' review — a symphonic portrait of the jazz legend

Read our review of A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical on Broadway, playing at Studio 54 and featuring many of the jazz legend's greatest hits.

Bio-musicals — those that use a person’s songs to tell their life story — have become a staple of Broadway theatre in the way a hamburger is a staple of a diner menu. Rarely are they exceptional, but they are often palatable, with the safety net of (usually) beloved songs from the past if all else fails. But once in a while, a bio-musical exceeds expectations and, even within the confines of its genre, has enough pizzazz to be an exception to the rule.

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, now at Studio 54 has old-fashioned, gleeful tap numbers, ensemble dance lines, and superb musical sequences of classic big-band jazz, but there are also moments of surprising subversiveness. While tracing the life of trumpeting jazz icon Louis Armstrong — with James Monroe Iglehart breathing an air of beguiling, befuddled naivete into the musician — A Wonderful World refuses to look away from the racism that latched its claws into Armstrong's career, from him watching former band members be brutalized by bigots in New Orleans to navigating the Hollywood industry that helped make Armstrong the King of Jazz.

Iglehart’s Armstrong wants to share the joy and electricity jazz brings him, but A Wonderful World avoids flattening that idea into a brainless call for uncomplicated love: That 500-watt smile of Armstrong’s contains pain. In a showstopping scene, Armstrong meets Lincoln Perry (Dewitt Fleming Jr.), better known as Stepin Fetchit. Perry tells Armstrong to acquire “a white man” to help him deal with the business side of the industry and basically advises him to code-switch — that is, to create a persona for a white audience. Armstrong and the fleet-footed, mesmerizing Perry turn “When You’re Smiling” from a cheerful song into an incisive one about the shield people of color must maintain to succeed in white America.

Armstrong repeatedly says jazz is about “the choices you make in between the notes.” Book writer Aurin Squire and conceivers Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw toggle between conventional bio-musical choices and more challenging ones, keeping A Wonderful World lively and interesting. Shying away from an unblemished portrait of Armstrong and instead acknowledging his womanizing and self-involvement, A Wonderful World makes space for a version of Black artistry that confronts the complexities of artists as humans, and how the world around them may fail them.

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical summary

In the 1970s, Louis Armstrong is preparing for a retrospective concert revue while reminiscing about his life. As Armstrong recalls his memories, the show examines how he became an icon.

A Wonderful World begins in his home of New Orleans, where he came up in King Joe Oliver’s jazz band, and then takes us from the gangster-laden town of Chicago to his stint in Hollywood at the infancy of the sound era, and finally to New York.

Many of Armstrong’s greatest hits get love, from “Kiss of Fire” to “It Don’t Mean a Thing” to "Cheek to Cheek." There's also incredible choreography (by Rickey Tripp, with tap choreography by Fleming) to songs like “It’s Tight Like That” and “I Double Dare You,” and you’ll be sure to leave the show tapping your toes.

What to expect at A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

A Wonderful World is not only constructed around the creation of a concert revue (intended, in the story, for an audience of people from Louis’ community), but also around his four wives: Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins), Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming), Alpha Smith (Kim Exum), and Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy).

There’s glitz and glamor throughout, but these women set the show on fire. They're not just wilting wives suffering from the neglect of a self-interested musician on the road, but women with fleshed-out ambitions and desires that contrast Armstrong’s decisions.

What audiences are saying about A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

A Wonderful World has a 90% audience approval rating on the review aggregator Show-Score, with positive responses to nearly all aspects of the show, from the performances to the visuals to the choreography.

• “Marvelous Acting, FDancing, Singing, and Music. James Monroe Iglehart truly becomes Louis Armstrong with a Tony Worthy performance.” - Show-Score user Hara
• “We saw A Wonderful World last night & it was absolutely spectacular! I brought my husband and parents who were visiting from Nola area & everyone loved it.” - Show-Score user Ellen Capuano
• “Such an amazing show! The sets and costumes are stunning, the dancing and singing are beathtaking, and the story is beautiful, nuanced, and bittersweet.” - Show-score user Lorraine Woodward

Read more audience reviews of A Wonderful World on Show-Score.

Who should see A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

• Dionne Figgins, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Kim Exum, and Darlesia Cearcy command the stage and let their passion consume the theatre, and everyone should see their performances. Figgins and Harney-Fleming’s duet mashup of “Some of These Days” and “After You’ve Gone” especially feel like a wrecking ball to the heart.
• See it if you're looking for a complex lead performance. It’s easy to get lost in the unrepentant joy of the jazz played on stage, but Iglehart, in a wonderful performance that both honors Armstrong and carves out a sense of voice and perspective for the actor. His performance places much of the music back into its social and cultural context, and his rendition of “Black and Blue” is particularly moving.
• See this show if you want spectacular visuals. The choreography is sharp and alive but filled with savory sultriness along the way. And Toni-Leslie James’ costumes catch the stage lights with a classic sparkle, the movements creating a streak of fire from the sequins and jewels on stage while everyone is doing the Charleston.

Learn more about A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical

A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical showcases the peaks and valleys of Armstrong's celebrity, as all bio-musicals do, but the show is willing to engage with the sociopolitical challenges that contribute to those factors, setting A Wonderful World apart. A Wonderful World never ignores the innocence of its title, but by engaging with the harsh reality of Armstrong’s world, you can see how he found wonder in it anyway.

Learn more and get A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical tickets on New York Theatre Guide. A Wonderful World is at Studio 54.

Photo credit: A Wonderful World on Broadway. (Photos by Jeremy Daniel)