Three things grace Westcoast Black Theater Troupe’s stage: the music of Fats Waller, a tribute to his embodiment but also performer Leon Pitts himself, and WBTT’s live band (previously playing from backstage). These constitute a triple treat for audiences who fill all seats in WBTT’s Creator and Director Nate Jacobs’s “dream come true” venue. They frequently applaud his Tribute to Waller but also his past and present portrayer Leon S. Pitts.
Projections filling the upstage screen area often depict the places Fats Waller lived at the times his music developed. These fit the script’s progression of biographical sketches followed by performance of matching musical accomplishments. Onstage musicians in one corner include pianist/director Matthew McKinnon, whose size, costume and bearing make him a replica of Fats. But the active replica performing throughout is Leon S. Pitts, very successful longtime Fats portrayer.
Pitts duplicates his past hit portrayals with Ariel Blue’s Devenae, fictional female lead who struts her stuff like him and for him. Pitts has Ulric Alfred Taylor’s LeRoy as Fats’s friend who joins him in duets (as on “Hold Tight” and “Your Feet’s Too Big”) or more often when the whole cast does numbers like “Ballin’ the Jack”, “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” and “Black and Blue”. The other two singing, dancing cast members are divas Jazzmin Carson and the youngest Andrea Jean (who’s blondish like her Sunshine name).
Pitts’ Leon has the most male singles. ( “Viper Drag”, “Dinah”, “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” are the most familiar.) Ariel has the most among the women: “Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home” and “Why Don’t You Do Right?” being best known. Notable solos by the other women are “Keeping Out of Mischief” by Andrea Jean and “Stormy Weather” that Jazzmin Carson renders far differently than Lena Horne famously did.
Enough numbers involve the whole cast or single couplings to provide variety. “Ain’t Misbehaving” gets the attention it deserves in the narrative and in performance. Donald Frison’s choreography is always attached to Waller’s songs, never dance for its own sake. With his sax, Jason Whitmore stands out in one of the numbers, and Matthew McKinnon’s band is always just right in all of them.
All the tech work is praiseworthy. Adrienne Pitts’ costume designs, always a WBTT highlight, here are breathtakingly abundant, especially considering there are only five cast performers. How fitting for a double tribute to Fats Waller and Leon Pitts!
