Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole is a musical portrait of the great pop ballad singer, centered around his national TV show which was aired for a season in 1957. Despite Cole’s popularity with white audiences, the show’s chicken-livered sponsor (the Revlon Company) bowed out, on the grounds that a Negro could not sell cosmetics. Cole was prompted to remark: “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” Lights Out is set in the TV studio where his last show is taking place before an unseen live audience. Cole, impersonated believably and excitingly by Dule Hill, is understandably upset. He was the first African-American entertainer to have his own network show; losing it because of racist reasons triggered his anger and resentment, to such an extent that he almost refused to go on the air. That is what the creators of Lights Out would have us believe. It’s one of many exaggerations of the truth that turn up in the show, which is now running at the Geffen after premiering at People’s Light in Malvern, PA (with Hill in the lead role). No doubt Cole was upset about being cancelled, but he didn’t tear his hair out or threaten to put his fist through the wall; he was too cool and hip for that. Also on the hysterical side is his producer and manager (Bryan Dobson), who keeps railing at Cole, trying to keep him in line. “Do this show and make it a good one because then I’ll be able to talk the network into giving you another series,” he tells Cole (or words to that effect). While this folderol is taking place, one of the TV show’s guest stars, Sammy Davis Jr. (Daniel J. Watts) is running wild, doing comic shticks, belting out songs, mugging to the audience and interrupting the commercials with improvised jokes. Davis, a world-class entertainer, comes off as a grotesque clown in Lights Out (except when he and Hill team up on a scintillating tap-dance number).> Other guest stars include Eartha Kitt (Gisela Adisa), Betty Hutton, and Peggy Lee (both played by Ruby Lewis). In between the songs, jokes, dances and verbal clashes, we are introduced in sudden flashback scenes to Cole’s mother (Zonya Love) and Cole as a youngster (Connor Amacia Matthews). The slap-dash nature of Domingo and McGregor’s script detracts from the essential strength of the show: Hill’s performance as Cole. His versions of “Nature Boy,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right” (written by Cole, by the way) are on the money. Some of the other songs (sung by Kitt, Hutton, Lee) light up the stage as well. But each time a musical number works, the frantic, over-the- top story kills what follows.
