I had the pleasure of attending "Smokey Joe's Café" last night produced by the Skylight Opera Theatre on the beautiful Cabot stage at the Broadway Theatre Center. The production is a musical revue featuring the music of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, a dynamic songwriting team that wrote more than 200 songs in the golden age of the '50s and '60s.
The talented cast was primarily black, which reflected Leiber and Stoller's formula for success that was based on taking R&B music and transforming it to appeal to a wider audience. I can get that, but I did not know that when the lights went down, and my first impression was that I had never seen black people act and dance so "white" in my life. My question was, "how can they do this?" The scene portrayed just seemed so far from the reality I live in, I could hardly believe it.
But, that's just it. Plays create their own realities, and portray past realities and demonstrate alternate realities, which is the beauty of theater. And who am I as a white person to know what a black person's reality is like anyway? And regardless of color, life in the '50s and early '60s seems all stereotyped, glamified and ever-so-bright-and-shiny, which is, quite frankly, hard for me to relate to. (I do, however, love the chrome and the dresses.)
Once I let go of all that, and just settled back into the alternate reality presented, I did enjoy the show. The set design was classy and worked well for the show. And the costuming was fun -- I wanted to steal the sparkly purple boa. The cast did a swell job, and I think their sound improved as the show went on and their voices got warmed up. I warmed up too, and I finally really started to relate when they started singing about smoking and drinking and dancing the hoochi-coo. I loved the flashing lights and the streamers.
The choreography during certain numbers kept the actors so busy it was a wonder they could sing at all. My favorite number was "I'm a Woman" which was very well delivered. I think it was the first time I ever really heard the lyrics in that song without it being piped into the fragrance commercial that I heard just a billion too many times at what must have been an impressionable point in my life. (Why did they drop that one into Scooby Doo?) I also thought it was cool when they incorporated signing into "Stand By Me."
The cast received a standing ovation and the house was pretty much full on a Sunday night. And chances are that even if you have not heard of Leiber and Stoller, you probably know quite a few of their songs.
Jessica Laub was born in Milwaukee in the spring of 1970, thereafter spending her childhood days enjoying the summers on the shores of Lake Michigan and winters at the toboggan chute in Brown Deer Park.
Alas, she moved away to broaden her horizons, and studied out East for a few years at Syracuse University. After a semester "abroad" at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, she graduated with a B.A. in English and advertising.
After college, she worked at Glacier National Park, a ski hill in Steamboat, Col. and organic farms in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California.
In 1995, Laub moved to Nicaragua where she worked on community gardens, reforestation and environmental education as a Peace Corps volunteer. While there, she learned to speak Spanish, pay attention to world politics and how to make tortillas.
Laub then returned to Milwaukee to join the ranks of the non-profit sector. Currently, she works at the United Performing Arts Fund (UPAF) and keeps busy by painting, throwing pots, reading, trying to understand her two-year old son, seeing performances and howling at the moon.
