Ain’t Misbehavin’
The Fats Waller Musical Show
Festival Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
While it is one of the great twentienth century art forms and an instance of American culture at its most inventive and vigorous, the blues sometimes gets the blues itself. With a shift to an African aesthetic many Black Americans no longer warm to the music of oppression, some would say defeat. And the shift in sexual politics in the past twenty years has left the blues looking more than somewhat phallocentric. But this music has a context and a politics and although within the genre there is plenty of dross it would be absurd to dismiss it as politically incorrect.
However, these are sensitive times and it is reasonable to consider what sort of images and ideas are being presented in black American music. These days there are still enormous pressures- economic and social- on the black American community . While some women are finding better days, many men are losing ground. They are also facing renewed stereotyping for violence and family neglect. This is not without considerable empirical evidence but it vastly oversimplifies the situation to blame the victims.
Everything from the LA riots to Public Enemy to The Color Purple has deepened racial confusion. So did the extraordinary public spectacle of the Clarence Thomas hearings. The recent SBS program on the effect of Anita Hill’s testimony reminded us of the complexities still for American persons of colour. What are clearcut issues for the white bourgeoisie raise old and painful stigmas for African Americans. Anita Hill displayed remarkable courage and was absolutely entitled to speak out. But it was bound to feed racist America’s old fears and fascination with black male sexuality. The prurient details, transmitted live by network TV, mutated questions of sexual misbehaviour into racial humiliation for both Hill and Thomas.
All this is to say that these are racially difficult times and people of goodwill in racist societies- whether in the United States or in South Australia- want to do better. We want to understand and change old habits of objectification, to recognise the workings of corrupt mythology and unresolved attitudes. There is a lot to learn and understand. This is where the entertainment business has much to contribute- whether it is through Bran Nue Dae or the movies of Spike Lee. And it is this that also makes you wonder why you’re sitting watching Ain’t Misbehavin’.
Thomas “Fats” Waller was a fine musician and entertainer and it is hard to see what he ever did to deserve the travesty that is Ain’t Misbehavin’- The Fats Waller Musical Show. Waller, a brilliant stride pianist and highly successful songwriter was a major exponent of classic blues. Recording for Okeh from the early twenties he was a contemporary of Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey and Louis Armstrong. He also wrote for and recorded with Bessie Smith and like these performers enjoyed commercial success – but always at a price. No matter how famous Armstrong or Bessie Smith or later, Billie Holiday became, they always played servants and lackeys in the movies, their smiles were as old and compliant as Mr Bojangles himself.
Another problem with classic blues, compared with the more direct lyricism of country blues, is that for every masterpiece – Bessie Smith’s Backwater Blues or Waller’s own Black and Blue and The Joint is Jumping- there was much that was unimaginative and derivative. What rescued Bessie Smith- and Waller himself- from the crudely salacious lyrics of the talented, but altogether-too-prolific Andy Razaf, was the performers’ wit, dignity and presence, something that not only distanced them from the banality of the material but gave it authority and subtlety it didn’t deserve.
Unfortunately Ain’t Misbehavin’ is not looking to give the music any political or social context beyond the denatured glitz of late Seventies Broadway. The show, devised by Richard Maltby jr and choreographed by Arthur Faria, has been on the road for fifteen years. This particular incarnation, directed by Jackie Warner, despite able musical direction from D.G. Ivey, is showing every sign of fatigue. Whatever energy it may once have had is reduced to bump and grind. Every fat lady wobble gag, every dizzy bimbo and country bumpkin cliche and every grope joke is wheeled out with stupefying obviousness.
As the Fats Waller persona , Frank A. Farrow III has an engaging presence, a fine baritone, but no room to move. He doesn’t play piano- instead he and the company chew through a list of numbers choreographed to death and reinforcing sexual and racial stereotypes with depressing repetition. Of the rest of the five person company- Gail D. Anderson does well with I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling, and in duet with Farrow, but Sharon E. Scott fails to recover from the weight-challenged vulgarity of Squeeze Me. Of Marion J. Caffey’s hyperactivity and Carla Renata Williams’ screeching, the less said the better.
A chance to give the smart, genuinely comic music of Fats Waller some flair and shading has been wholly lost. Instead, the performers, done up like pimps and retro-disco queens, laboured every irony and ground our faces in every entendre. I left at intermission after the particularly lame version of The Joint is Jumpin. Maybe something got turned around in the second half when they sang Black and Blue but I wasn’t going to risk it. There’s only so much misbehaviour anyone should have to take .
The Adelaide Review, May, 1993. p.36.