h much of the libretto to focus on the score and the singing of the Broadway vets in the cast. Certainly the characters are one-dimensional and unsophisticated, and the story, which seems to owe a little to Goethe’s Faust (a completion between God and Satan for one man’s soul, a set period of time after which the man in question will lose his soul, and a sudden reprieve at the last moment which sends his soul to Heaven instead of Hell; see my recent post, “Faust Clones, Part 1,” 15 January 2016), is a bare-bones plot on which to hang the songs and dances, which have more to offer. (I can only imagine the dances conceived by Balanchine, one of the great choreographers in ballet as well as on Broadway, and Dunham, a renowned dancer-chorographer of the mid-20th century, since there’s no record of what they looked like and the Encores! stage, largely occupied by the 31-piece orchestra, leaves little room for elaborate movement.)
Director Santiago-Hudson managed quite well on the cramped stage—made even more space-challenged by the two large thrones for the emissaries of God and Satan, accompanied by their minions, which were nearly always present at stage left and right. (The next world’s agents weren’t just a decorative entourage: the two trios added marvelous harmony to their masters’ songs, like otherworldly Pips or Raylettes.) Most of the story doesn’t require a lot of physical action—the bar scene in act two is an exception—and Santiago-Hudson kept the show moving without drawing attention to the space problem. So did choreographer Camille A. Brown, who must have had a tougher job as the dances were generally quite energetic (Dziemianowicz called them “sinewy and spirited,” which is exactly right) and usually involved several members of the company up to the entire ensemble. (The full cast for this presentation of Cabin was 46—probably another reason the show isn’t revived.)
Santiago-Hudson clearly cast the best voices he could find—not to take anything away from the acting. Some of the actors are already well known for their singing (LaChanze, a Tony-winner for the original production of The Color Purple), but all the featured cast were superb in the musical numbers and the chorus measured up equally. I don’t like to single any one performer out here, but I must say that Chuck Cooper (Tony for The Life), as the Head Man, has a genuinely stirring baritone that resonates throughout the theater. (We were in the middle of the mezzanine.) Beyond that, all of the singers brought character and emotion to the songs that stood in excellently for the acting in the missing book scenes. (For those who don’t know the Encores! process, the concerts are only rehearsed for eight days, plus one dress rehearsal. The actors carry scripts for many of the book scenes.) Needless to say, the standards like “Taking a Chance” and “Happiness” were joys to hear, especially so gorgeously rendered, but there were also nice surprises among the less-well-known pieces, like “Do What You Wanna Do,” sung by Cooper’s Head Man (a paean to . . . well, devilry) and Georgia Brown’s saucy “Honey in the Honeycomb,” vibrantly sung by Hughes (and which I urge someone to revive in a contemporary pop or rock style).
Between the simplistic book and the cuts for the concert presentation, the characters are pretty simple. Nonetheless, the company gave them color and dimension beyond the mere words Root provided them. This is down to Santiago-Hudson, too, of course—though given the short rehearsal schedule, the actors would have had to do a lot of (quick) work on their own. Perhaps the hardest characters to fill out were the Head Man and the Lord’s General because they’re essentially allegorical figures with no back story. Yet both Cooper and Norm Lewis (Tony nomination for The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess) brought a sense of humor and a kind of frat house competitiveness to the parts that prevented them from being the stiffs they could have been.
Of course, one of the great pleasures of the Encores! concert performances of seldom-seen musicals is hearing the score play