What better way to tap into the roots of black American history than with tap itself, a dance form that affords freedom in its movement, anger in its staccato, sadness in its sweeps, and hope in its rhythms? The conceit for Bring in `Da Noise, Bring in `Da Funk weds a potent theme -- the 300-year journey from slave ships to street corners -- with choreographed numbers that incorporate tap into slice-of-life vignettes.
One dramatic sequence shows the cast members in turn-of-the-century Chicago, symbolically breaking the chains that link them to a giant, forbidding machine, lit with blue-black grimness by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer. A night on the town soon morphs into the Chicago Riot, heightened by the use of photos and newspaper headlines projected above the stage.
Throughout, director George C. Wolfe’s use of archival stills to offset the live action is extremely effective, as when statistics on lynching are projected as counterpoint to a tap dance by Baakari Wilder. The steps, we soon realize, approximate the frantic kicks of a hanging man.
A more integral presence on Broadway than she was off (at the Public Theater, where Noise debuted), Ann Duquesnay -- using Bessie Smith growls, Billie Holiday flutters, Aretha Franklin howls, and Mahalia Jackson exhortations -- takes us through the eras musically much the way Savion Glover’s extraordinarily choreographed dance sequences pull us across visually. Reg E. Gaines’s poetry is still the least potent element of Bring in `Da Noise, even though he’s been replaced as a performer by the much stronger Jeffrey Wright. Very often, it’s simply a question of music and percussion drowning out words that have to be listened to extra-hard because they’re non-narrative in the first place.
Much like off-Broadway’s Jam on the Groove, Noise finds exhilaration in humor, its Stomp-like dance for two dishpan handlers and blissfully tongue-in-cheek Buckwheat number (danced by Baakari Wilder) both working even better on Broadway.
Purists may grimace at Bring in `Da Noise, Bring in `Da Funk’s Tony nomination for Best New Musical, but what other show so completely blends music, visual presentation, dance, and story? And watching Savion Glover alone onstage with just a spotlight and mirror, tapping out the stylistic differences between “Green, Chaney, Buster, and Slyde,” is a Chronicle Big-ger than any Star you could Rent.
