| After Midnight | |
|---|---|
 Opening Night Playbill | |
| Music | Various Artists |
| Lyrics | Various Artists |
| Basis | The music of Duke Ellington, Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields, Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler |
| Productions | 2011, 2012 Encores! 2013 Broadway (Brooks Atkinson Theater) 2015 Norwegian Escape |
After Midnight is a Broadway musical that premiered at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 2013. The revue is based on an earlier 2011 revue, titled Cotton Club Parade, which ran in concert at Encores! in 2011 and 2012.
After Midnight is the Broadway production of Cotton Club Parade that premiered Off-Broadway at New York City Center's Encores! concert series in November 2011, starring Amber P. Riley in 2012 as the Special Guest Star and directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle with music direction by Jazz at Lincoln Center artistic director Wynton Marsalis. [1] Cotton Club Parade played a return engagement in November 2012 at New York City Center Encores!. [2] The Cotton Club Parade was conceived by Jack Viertel, artistic director of "Encores!", who said "When we started rehearsals for 'Cotton Club Parade' in 2011, we knew we had something very special in store for audiences. Now that we’ve wrapped up our second run of this show at City Center, I couldn’t be more proud to have the show come to Broadway." [1]
The revue takes place "after midnight" in New York's Harlem. It features jazz pieces by Duke Ellington, Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields and Harold Arlen, framed by the poetry of Langston Hughes. The show features an orchestra of 17 musicians, 25 vocalists, dancers and performers. It is headlined by a rotating list of performers. [3]
The Broadway production began previews at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on October 18, 2013 and opened on November 3, 2013 with special guest star Fantasia Barrino, who performed through February 9, 2014. The production features Dulé Hill as "The Host", Adriane Lenox, Karine Plantadit and Desmond Richardson. [4] [5] Direction and choreography is by Warren Carlyle, with Scenic Design by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Isabel Toledo, lighting by Howell Binkley, and sound by Peter Hylenski.
Dancers and vocalists include: Julius "iGlide" Chisolm, Virgil J. Gadson, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Jared Grimes, Everett Bradley, Cedric Neal, T. Oliver Reid, Monroe Kent III, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M. Hill Jackson, Bryonha Marie Parham, Marija Abney, Phillip Attmore, Christopher Broughton, Taeler Elyse Cyrus, C.K. Edwards, Bahiyah Hibah, Erin Moore, Justin Prescott, Allysa Shorte, Monique Smith, Daniel Watts, Danielle Herbert and David Jennings. [6] The show was produced by Scott Sanders, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Furman, Candy Spelling, Starry Night Entertainment, Hal Newman, Allan S. Gordon and Adam S. Gordon, James L. Nederlander, Robert K. Kraft, Catherine and Fred Adler, Robert Appel, Jeffrey Bolton, Scott M Delman, James Fantaci, Ted Liebowitz, Stephanie P. McClelland, Sandy Block and Carol R. Fineman.
Special guest stars after Fantasia Barrino included k.d. lang [5] (February 11 – March 9), Toni Braxton with Babyface (March 18 – March 30), Vanessa Williams (April 1 – May 11), Barrino (May 13 – June 8) [7] and Patti LaBelle (June 10 – June 29). The show closed on June 29, 2014, after 272 performances and 19 previews; LaBelle was the final guest star. [8] Gladys Knight and Natalie Cole were set to join the cast as special guest stars but the show closed before their set dates. [9]
Upon closing, Broadway Licensing acquired the rights for stock and amateur performance rights. [10]
|
|
Stephen Holden, in his review of the Cotton Club Parade in 2011 for The New York Times wrote: "The revue’s solution to the debatable issue of caricature and at what point a broad performance becomes a demeaning minstrel-show parody is to rein in the extremes. But it is in no way sedate. If the show has no Nell Carter or Ruth Brown, it does have Adriane Lenox, who delivers the Sippie Wallace advice song 'Women Be Wise'... with a knowing tang.... Mr. Carlyle’s clean choreography connects variations of the Charleston with jitterbugging and a little break-dancing to suggest the continuity of styles without insisting on it." [11]
Elysa Gardner in her review for USA Today wrote: "...you get 90 minutes of honest, vital entertainment, delivered with enough breezy wit to mitigate the flashes of pomp." [12]
Linda Winer, in her review for Newsday, noted that the most important part of the revue is the band. She wrote: "When that push for slickness goes into overdrive, the ensemble can feel ragged.... Adriane Lenox is marvelous in such sardonic, been-around revelations as 'Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night.' The dancers, led by former Twyla Tharp star Karine Plantadit, are strong." [13]
| Year | Award Ceremony | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Tony Award | Best Musical | Nominated | |
| Best Featured Actress in a Musical | Adriane Lenox | Nominated | ||
| Best Direction of a Musical | Warren Carlyle | Nominated | ||
| Best Choreography | Won | |||
| Best Costume Design of a Musical | Isabel Toledo | Nominated | ||
| Best Lighting Design of a Musical | Howell Binkley | Nominated | ||
| Best Sound Design of a Musical | Peter Hylenski | Nominated | ||
| Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Musical Revue | Won | ||
| Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Adriane Lenox | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Choreography | Warren Carlyle | Won | ||
| Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Musical | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Director of a Musical | Warren Carlyle | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Choreographer | Won | |||
| Outstanding Costume Design | Isabel Toledo | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Lighting Design | Howell Binkley | Nominated | ||
Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer, and children's book author. Over a career spanning more than six decades, she has starred in musical theatre, television and film, performed in solo concerts and released recordings. She is a critically acclaimed Broadway performer, having received seven nominations for Tony Awards, winning two, and nine Drama Desk Award nominations, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
The Cotton Club was a New York City nightclub from 1923 to 1940. It was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue (1923–1936), then briefly in the midtown Theater District (1936–1940). The club operated during the United States' era of Prohibition and Jim Crow era racial segregation. Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the Will Vodery Choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Midge Williams, Lena Horne, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham, Bill Robinson, The Nicholas Brothers, Charles 'Honi' Coles, Leonard Reed, Stepin Fetchit, the Berry Brothers, The Four Step Brothers, Jeni Le Gon and Earl Snakehips Tucker.
Fantasia Monique Barrino-Taylor, known professionally by her mononym Fantasia, is an American R&B singer and actress. She rose to prominence in 2004 for her performance of the Porgy and Bess standard "Summertime" during the third season of the reality television series American Idol, and eventually became that season's winner. Following her victory, Barrino became the second female artist to have their first single debut at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100, following Lauryn Hill, when her debut single "I Believe", launched atop the chart.
Kristin Dawn Chenoweth is an American actress and singer, with credits in musical theatre, film, and television. In 1999, she won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Sally Brown in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown on Broadway. In 2003, Chenoweth received a second Tony Award nomination for originating the role of Glinda in the musical Wicked. Her television roles include Annabeth Schott in NBC's The West Wing and Olive Snook on the ABC comedy drama Pushing Daisies, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2009. She also starred in the ABC TV series GCB in 2012, played Lavinia in Trial & Error in 2018, and played the antagonist, Mildred Layton, in the Apple TV+ musical comedy Schmigadoon! (2021).
Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer and dancer. She is known for her work on the Broadway stage, for which she has won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical twice, in 2002 for her role as Millie Dillmount in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and in 2011 for her performance as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, a role which she reprised in 2021 for a production in London and for which she received a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. Her other Broadway credits include Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet, and The Music Man. On television, Foster played the lead role in the short-lived ABC Family comedy-drama Bunheads from 2012 to 2013. From 2015 to 2021, she starred in the TV Land comedy-drama Younger.
Adriane Lenox is an American actress, best known for her performances in Broadway theatre. Her performance in the play Doubt: A Parable garnered her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2005. She received another Tony Award nomination for After Midnight in 2014.
Adelaide Louise Hall was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her long career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death and she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world's most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades. She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande, Rudy Vallee, and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington and with Fats Waller.
Orfeh is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Orfeh and her husband, Andy Karl, performed at the Lincoln Center's American Songbook Series in 2016, and in the Broadway musicals Saturday Night Fever, Legally Blonde, and Pretty Woman.
Kelli Christine O'Hara is an American actress and singer, most known for her work on the Broadway and opera stages.
Laura Ilene Benanti is an American actress and singer. Over the course of her Broadway career, she has received five Tony Award nominations. She played Louise in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Benanti then appeared in the Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown in 2010, winning the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She played Elsa Schräder in the 2013 NBC television production of The Sound of Music Live! and, in 2015, began playing twin sisters Alura and Astra in the TV series Supergirl. Benanti appeared as Edie Randall in the TBS comedy The Detour from 2017 until the show's cancellation in 2019. Since 2016, she has had a recurring role as First Lady Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Rebecca Luker was an American actress, singer, and recording artist, noted for her "crystal clear operatic soprano" and for maintaining long runs in Broadway musicals over the course of her three-decade-long career. The New York Times compared her to actresses such as Barbara Cook and Julie Andrews.
The Color Purple is a musical with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, and a book by Marsha Norman, based on the 1982 novel of the same name by Alice Walker and its 1985 film adaptation. The musical follows the journey of Celie, an African American woman in the American South from the early to mid-20th century.
Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer is an American singer and musical theatre actress.
Mark Gross is a Baltimore-born jazz alto saxophonist of the hard bop tradition. He studied at the Berklee College of Music, graduating in 1988, then worked in the band of Lionel Hampton and performed in Five Guys Named Moe on Broadway. He has since worked with a variety of other artists, including the bands of Delfeayo Marsalis, Nat Adderley and the Dave Holland Big Band. Gross first recorded as a solo act with 1997's Preach Daddy, followed in 2000 by The Riddle of the Sphinx, in 2013 with "Blackside", recently Mark Gross + Strings (2018).
Warren Carlyle is a British director and choreographer who was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England. He received Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Director of a Musical for the 2009 revival of Finian's Rainbow.
Scott Sanders is an Emmy-, Grammy-, and Tony-winning American television producer, film producer and theatre producer. His theatrical musical version of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, for which he was Lead Producer alongside co-producers Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones, premiered on Broadway in 2005, garnering 11 Tony Award Nominations including Best Musical.
Krysta Anne Rodriguez is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her roles as Ana Vargas in the NBC series Smash, Summer Henderson in the NBC series Trial & Error, Maxine Griffin in the ABC series Quantico and Ms. Crumble in the Netflix comedy series Daybreak.
Jeremy Michael Jordan is an American actor and singer. He has performed on Broadway, in television and film, in concert, as well as in other theatrical productions.
First Wives Club is a musical with music and lyrics by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland. The musical is based on the 1996 movie of the same name.
Ashley Jini Park is an American actress, dancer, and singer who is best known for her portrayal of Mindy Chen on Netflix comedy series Emily in Paris, and for originating the role of Gretchen Wieners in the 2018 Tony Award-nominated musical Mean Girls. She has received several awards including nominations for a Tony Award and a Grammy Award.