Westcoast Black Theater Troupe debuted 15 years ago as a community theater playing weekends in a rented space with a show dedicated to the Cotton Club of the 1920s-30s. This summer, under founder Nate Jacobs’s leadership, WBTT is offering an adaptation, Cotton Club Cabaret, as a professional group with its own theater. The one thing that hasn’t changed: WBTT packs its house and wins national laurels for itself and Jacobs.
Full and smaller groups along with solos and increased use of dance (here by the energetically dynamic Chakara Rosa and the youngest dancers in the WBTT crew) perform one Cotton Club hit after another. Between songs, narration highlights phases of the Cabaret’s history and the kind of performers and performances they offered to mainly white, well-heeled audiences. Toward the end, “A Jig in the Jungle” shows the indignities blacks suffered in order to work, but their talent is evident.
Central to the revival is long-time troupe member Earley Dean, whose stint as formally white-clad Cab Calloway, waving a baton on all sides of the stage, delivers “Minnie the Moocher.” It catches up the audience in the first half of celebrating the Cotton Club while promising an important second part.
Like Dean, Charles Westley Lattimore Jr., a returnee to WBTT after a decade or more, assures the place of men’s talent in a show whose type has lately highlighted women. Lattimore and Early are story-tellers who “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” but Lattimore is suave on his own with “Sophisticated Lady,” another Duke Ellington piece.
Never are the hot Mamas underplayed, though. Tarra Conner Jones gets woozy extolling “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer” and may even offer a nip to someone in the first row. She stars with Earley on “I Don’t Dig You Jack” and taunts Lattimore with “You ain’t Got It No More” (to which he sassily replies). Ariel Blue, always a favorite, has fun with “Goody, Goody” and later “Bring it Home to Me.” She actually wears varieties of blue!
The company illustrates “The Joint is Jumping” with pep worthy of Fats Waller and supplies nary a bump with “Take the A Train” and the vigorously danced “Black Bottom.” Elsewhere Marta McKinnon has put the bloom of youth into “Good Morning Heartache.”
Overall, adherence to Donald Frison’s choreography is never less than superb. The musicians are also first rate, without over reliance on enhanced sound.
As usual, lights go from subdued to flashy and flashing. Mark and Donna Buckalter’s simple set of tiered steps and platforms with the band central is set off by panels at each side. They’re particularly fanciful in Act II.
Cristy Owen and Mydra McKinnon’s costumes amaze with very colorful textures and glitz augmented by shiny jewelry. They have to be experienced to be fully appreciated, which audiences seem to reflect.
The show could use a bit of paring toward the end. It’s true that the Harlem Renaissance was coming on whereas the Cotton Club was waning. But both are a tad much to absorb and aren’t really needed in this fine revue.
