After our brains and cardio-respiratory functions have absorbed the news that those four fine women sitting in a room that looks like a cross between a television talk-show studio and the bridge of the starship Enterprise are Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, Nancy Wilson and Aretha Franklin, only then do we begin to wonder what brings these luminaries together. There's the money, of course—a can't-refuse sum for one night's work—but also the curiosity factor. The producer, you see, is an eccentric gazillionaire named Mister Maurice who wants to stage the ultimate All-Star Diva Concert, featuring not only the greatest living female vocalists, but a few holographically reproduced goddesses from the realm of the departed, as well. ("With enough money, anything is possible!," he reminds us.) Pay no attention to the man behind the screen, children. The sole purpose of this dazzle-eyed wizard, whose mercurial demeanor makes Willy Wonka sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi, is to impose a structure on the evening's agenda. His two keypad-twiddling assistants are there to supply hip-hop cameos and eye candy while providing rest breaks for the squad of golden-piped prime donne, a task shared by Robert Reddrick's muscular stage band, sporting extra brass and woodwinds for this assignment. Oh, and don't forget the 200-voice chorus shouting harmonies from their seats in the house. (You never noticed the balcony until now, did you?) So what's on the program of the showcase promised us by Black Ensemble at last summer's Men of Soul? From the early days of divadom come museum-accurate impressions of Billie Holliday, Dinah Washington and Nina Simone, along with the reigning royals' breakout hits. No-shows Lena Horne, Dionne Warwick, Patti LaBelle and Tina Turner are acknowledged in simulated archival footage, and even Beyonce drops by to open a conversation on what distinguishes a "capital-D" diva from an undeniably talented, but not yet immortal, pop-music icon. Ultimately, though, the take-away is not in the titles—why quibble over who's the "queen" and who's the "empress" of soul?—but the additional resonance brought by the quartet of Rhonda Preston, Rashada Dawan, Melanie McCullough and Shari Addison to such potentially cloying ballads as "I've Never Been to Me" when choreographed as mentorly advice from the surviving elders to their acolytes; or a flashback duet by Donny Hathaway and a younger Roberta Flack to lend fresh intensity to the too-often lullabyish "Killing Me Softly" before "Rock Steady" provides us with a rallying anthem into a new year fraught with challenge and uncertainty.
