Review: ‘Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical’ has a story worth hearing and songs from the early days of rock ‘n’ roll
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
For anyone who cares about the provision of live and classy nights out on Michigan Avenue, “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical” is a very positive development this summer. Not only do theatergoers have a chance to see the gorgeously restored Studebaker Theater — an architectural gem transformed from how it looked even a year or so ago — but they get excellent singing, strikingly innovative choreography (in the first act, at least), craftful direction from Sheldon Epps and an intriguing and entertaining story of one of the American music business’s biggest talents and least sung heroes.
The jukebox show “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical” tells the story of the titular singer-songwriter whose hits included both the title number “Personality” and “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy.” As with so many Black musicians in the early days of rock ’n’ roll, Price, who was from New Orleans, had to fend off the appropriation, if not the outright theft, of his musical innovations and there is much in this show very familiar for anyone who has seen “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Tina” and “Motown: The Musical,” not to mention the local biographical musicals long enjoyed by fans of the Black Ensemble Theater uptown.
But other elements are distinctive: Price created his own record label and nightclub and helped other artists, including Erma Franklin, Aretha’s big sister, whose pre-Janis Joplin rendition of “A Piece of My Heart” appears in the show (and is well sung by Alexandria Reese). Genuine efforts were made for “Personality” not to entirely be a hagiography, especially when it came to Price’s relationship with his first wife Emma (also Reese), but it’s certainly a loving portrait of its subject. B. Jeffrey Madoff, the bookwriter, made use of extensive interviews with Price, who died while this show was in an even earlier stage of development.
But simply put, Madoff still has to theatricalize more of those conversations. At this juncture, too much of the show involves Price, played in his prime by Saint Aubyn, telling us about his life in past tense. Those long stretches of narration are certainly honestly performed and, if you are into music history, very interesting, but they’re less theatrical than the actual present-tense scenes. When we get them, they are well constructed and far more involving — a great example is Price’s interactions with his shady partner, Harold Logan, who is fabulously played by Stanley Wayne Mathis. The issue is just there aren’t enough of them.
The other big thing to fix if this show is to move to New York is to make sure that the choreography does not drop out of the show. In the early New Orleans scenes, the work of the immensely talented Edgar Godineaux is both innovative and compelling, not to mention superbly danced by the ensemble. But once Price becomes more of a businessperson, that element of the show seems to fall away and the movement patterns become much less thrilling.
Ideally, creative heads would come together to figure out a dance vocabulary that could be sustained throughout the show. One way to do that would be to include more of the work of others in Price’s lifelong orbit, not a bad idea since Price did not have as extensive a catalog of hits as some of the others who have been the subjects of jukebox biographies; audiences are here to hear music and the show cannot let itself stray too far from that, even if Price himself did move into other arenas.
The other big opportunity here is to build the role of the young Price, fantastically vocalized by Darian Peer, a major new talent already breaking out in this show. He’s underused, given what he can do. It’s not a bad idea to have a pair of Lloyds, but these actors do not read as so different in age: there’s an argument for equalizing things a little more, which is no slight to Aubyn, who certainly lifts up this character and makes him sing. All he has to do more of is relate to an audience demonstrably hungry to better get to know a great American musician. Against whom life and times conspired, at least when it came to fully realizing his talents.
Madoff, to his great credit, does pursue the idea of Price as emblematic, a prima-facie example of how what we call rock ’n’ roll was created by Black Americans in cities like New Orleans and Chicago, mostly poor and without much formal education. Only a small fraction of them became famous and their collective creation made billions for others. I wish he’d go further; it is poetic justice for Price, a genius whose military service interrupted his career and meant that the music business decided he was old news.
Hardly. To do him full justice, “Personality” just needs more of what its title promises. It’s already well worth a look.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical” (3 stars)
When: Through Sept. 3
Where: Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: $57-$127 at 312-753-3210 and personalitymusical.com
