The song and dance were always the reason to queue for Shuffle Along, not only in 1921, when the all-Black musical landed on Broadway (if a mile north of 42nd Street and to the side of Broadway proper, on “a no consequence street”), but in 2016, when renowned director George C. Wolfe and the peerless hoofer Savion Glover teamed up to tell the story of the historic show’s creation. How excellent, then, that the 10th anniversary revival—presented by Lincoln Center—has jettisoned rickety story inside of rickety story for Glover’s dances (no record of the originals) and Eubie Blake’s winsome, silken songs—the kind that would soon dominate early Hollywood musicals. For this two-day-only outing, the major players, including the incandescent Audra McDonald and the much-missed Glover, reprise their roles. Yet a good deal of the legend and delight of Shuffle Along, early and late, stem from the small female dance chorus, whose intricate mesh of rhythms includes the feisty and fierce, the teasing and exultant. The chorus is returning, too. —Apollinaire Scherr
Arts Intel Report
In Concert: Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed
An illustration of Shuffle Along.
