A Wonderful World

10/22/23 – A new musical about the Life & Loves of Louis Armstrong at the Cadillac Palace Theatre –  151 W Randolph St, Chicago.

Q-tips say: Was good but wish it was more about Louis Armstrong’s life than the Women in his life.

Mrs. Q says: Yes, Louis A. was a womanizer. The scenes with Louis were good but not enough of those kinds of scene. The entire cast was extremely talented but too much of the story was about the women in his life instead of Louis & also too many dance scenes.

The other weird thing is that we don’t see much of Armstrong with other musicians, which is how many remember him, playing with a great big band like Joe “King” Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, who whooped it up in Chicago in the 1920s at the famed Lincoln Gardens on E. 31st St. Given who this show has as its lead I kept waiting for the big scene where Armstrong would be performing, joshing with the band, singing far more of the hundreds of songs he recorded, mixing it up with the audience. A delight, surely. But it never came, or not at least in a full-blown way. Instead, we got scene after scene involving letters, receipts and domestic altercations. Not what you want in Act 2 of a Louis Armstrong show.

Then the Q’s went to Catch 35 for dinner.