'A rarity': All-Black cast finds release in Louis Jordan's 'Five Guys Named Moe' at the Kravis

WEST PALM BEACH — The thumping, horn-filled songs of Louis Jordan fill The Rinker Playhouse, now transformed into The Funky Butt Jazz Club, a joint from the 1930s and 40s. On stage singing those hits are five guys who all happen to be named Moe, not one guy, not two guys, but five guys.

"Five Guys Named Moe" is the title of one of Jordan’s signature songs and the title of the musical celebrating his work. In the span of 90 minutes, audiences get to sing along to the story of Nomax, who's lost his lover and is down on his luck, while the Five Guys Named Moe sing their way through lessons of love, life, and music.

Produced by MNM Theatre Company. the musical is playing at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts through Sunday. It gets audiences dancing, with many members continuing to dance during intermission following the song “Push Ka Pi She Pie,” and it gets them singing to songs that haven’t charted since the 1930s.

Jordan was known as “The King of the Jukebox,” doing notable work in the world of jazz and also creating popular songs that would help him cross over and gain appeal with white audiences. He would collaborate with musicians of the era including Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby. He even came to star in some Hollywood short films.

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Once “Five Guys Named Moe” hit Broadway and The West End of London in 1992, it led to modern audiences like the ones at the Kravis enjoying his songs.

“I watched the show the day I got proposed to, 31 years ago,” Annette Emanuel of West Palm Beach said after seeing the show Sept. 16. “When I saw that it was coming to town, I told my husband we had to go see it.”

As much as this show means to its audience, it’s grown to mean much more for the men and women on stage and in the wings. For many of the cast and crew this is the first time they have played with an all-Black-led cast, which they say is a rarity in the theater world.

It’s also the first time they get to tell a story that isn’t centered on Black struggle, but rather one of Black joy.

'Five Guys Named Moe' is more than a show. It's a brotherhood.

The Moes cast includes: Doriyan Caty is Eat Moe, Don Seward is No Moe, Michael Wallace is Four-Eyed Moe, TJ Pursley is Little Moe and Leo Jasper Davis is Big Moe. Alongside them is James White III, who plays Nomax, and Desir Dumerjuste, who is the swing actor for every position, meaning he is capable of subbing for every Moe and Nomax.

The men, who range in age from 20 to 37, are all from Florida. They got their starts either performing as children or by singing in their church choir, which led them to theater. A few would enroll into performing arts schools, such as Dreyfoos School of the Arts, which Jasper attended. All pursued theater in college, with Caty, Pursley, and White III graduating from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

Through these years they’ve all performed in numerous shows such as “Jekyll and Hyde,” “Dreamgirls” and “Something Rotten,” but this show marks a milestone for most of these men. This is the first time they’ve hit the stage with an all-Black cast and a majority-Black crew.

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“This is a rarity. You never get a whole production where it’s from top to bottom Black,” said White III. “I’ve only ever experienced this one other time, and a lot of times, some of these guys, they’ll never experience this again.”

The cast of “Five Guys Named Moe” says this experience has formed a brotherhood among them. They understand one another, the personal and emotional, and it’s led to an onstage chemistry which is palpable.

This connection shines through as Dumerjuste and Caty recall the first time Dumerjuste got to perform in the show. They all made sure he ended up in the right spots, gave him help with moving props, and promised to remind him of a dance move or two.

“It was very much like a soccer team, for those that know the show and were watching us step in and help Desir in ways you know that a normal audience member would not recognize,” Caty said.

“I’ve never felt so safe and I’ve never felt so comfortable, being able to just be myself here with everybody on and off stage,” said Dumerjuste.

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For many of the cast and crew, this show is bigger than them. Some spoke of feeling judged or labeled at times because they are Black. Seward said that despite the stares he gets from being a tall, imposing Black man, “little do they know I do musical theatre. I’m the opposite. I’m so loveable.”

On Sept. 22, they hosted a private showing for local performing arts schools, with the intent of showing kids that they can be and belong on this stage too.

“Most of the time I only see one person who is my color or none at all, and I was like, ‘Well I feel like that’s not tangible,’” said Wallace. “Just knowing that I can be here on stage and people can see, makes other kids look at me and say I can be just like you.”

They knew there'd be scrutiny, and that they had to be ready.

While they celebrate being an all-Black cast, they also are aware of the scrutiny they face.

The show, on its own, is physically demanding. They dance to every song, and they do it all while dressed in full suits, emulating the high energy of the Motown bands. For many songs they move in sync, in others they do backup while one man sings the lead, but they are constantly moving around and encouraging the audience to do the same.

“Saturday Night Fish Fry” may be the most physical song of them all. The audience sees The Moes taking over the entire stage as they jump and do line kicks, splits and more.

Their director and choreographer, Jacquez Linder-Long, is a Dreyfoos graduate. He ran them through the songs over and over to perfect their movements. He says that this effort was intentional: He didn’t want anyone to poke holes in their performances.

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“There was an interview that happened a while ago for the news and he was like, ‘Why are you so hard on them?’ ” said Linder-Long. “It’s because we are a group of Black men that don’t have representation in South Florida, and we wanted to make sure everything was precise.”

His assistant director, Jazz Madison, concurred on the drive to present a refined production.

“Being a minority and people of color, sometimes you walk into spaces where people expect less. They expect worse or not good enough.” she said. “It’s an all-Black cast and an all-Black creative team. People want to focus on the negative, so it was that much more important for us to bring it to life in the best way possible.”

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Linder-Long told Marcie Gorman, his old teacher at Dreyfoos who now runs the MNM Theatre Company and is the producer of "Five Guys Named Moe," that he believed now is a crucial moment in history for a story like this, especially in South Florida.

Many of the cast and crew said they have followed the recent debates in Tallahassee, and in specific the new education standards regarding the teaching of Black history. Under the section on the slave trade, there is a benchmark clarification which states “how slaves developed skills, which in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

While the "Five Guys" production doesn’t touch upon the topic of slavery or highlight the political conflict in Florida, cast and crew are adamant that Black history be told and kept alive.

“Unfortunately, with the state that we live in, we have people at the top that don’t really believe in educating the children of what our culture, what Black culture, is about,” Davis said.

Part of that Black culture is the history of Black artists and their contribution to modern music, he said. Jordan and other musicians of his time laid out a blueprint for many artists to follow and build upon. Because of jazz, there exists Motown, hip-hop and even rock ‘n’ roll.

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Seward, who plays No Moe, wants to tell these stories before they are lost.

“We are now the modern-day storytellers to keep Louis Jordan alive," he said.

It isn’t just about Black music but also Black joy. Many of the cast talk about the shows they were taught in school, noting most were written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, such as "The Sound of Music” and “Cinderella."

The crew says that while these shows were important to the foundation of theater, there is an untapped well of Black shows that also were created in that era. One they pointed to is George Gershwin's “Porgy and Bess.”

They said “Five Guys Named Moe” stands apart from other shows written for Black casts that focus on the struggle of being Black in America. While it shows Nomax at a low point in his life, his story is uplifting in comparison.

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Each Moe takes a turn at singing Nomax a song about love and teach him to admit when he’s wrong. They look to help him out of a hard time but through tough love. In one scene, they even give Nomax a fresh shave and a new outfit, taking the idea that when you look good, you feel good, to a whole new level.

“It’s important to see six Black men having fun and enjoying life and not talking about violence,” Seward said. He continues by saying this show is about “helping our fellow man, saying you got to get yourself together and you don’t have to be like this.”

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The show opened with Gorman welcoming everyone. She encourage all to sing and dance when the cast invited them and introduced the crew and the producers.

The production company, MNM, hires only people from Florida, she said, giving actors options other than going straight to New York after college. Though many look for jobs on Broadway, the reality ends up being that they spend months working at restaurants as they wait for their “big break.”

“This is professional. We get paid just like everybody else in New York, and it makes the art tangible,” White III said. “Everyone can’t afford to go to New York, so if you can bring those stories here, it gives them an outlet.”

Linder-Long, the Dreyfoos graduate who attended school in the shadow of the Kravis Center, said there is an extra special reason to be involved in local theatre: hometown pride.

“I had to do it here. I had to do it in my hometown before I went anywhere else. This was the first place I thought of.”

Arianna Otero is a breaking news reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aotero@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @ari_v_otero. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: All-Black cast celebrates Black joy in 'Five Guys Named Moe' at Kravis