Theatre in Review: Motown (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre)

	Raymond Luke, Jr (center). Photo Joan Marcus.

The reviewers for Motown formed a veritable Greek chorus, dismissing the show's libretto -- the Berry Gordy story, as told by Berry Gordy -- but finding themselves unable to resist the tunestack of Motown classics ranging from "ABC" to "You've Really Got a Hold on Me." I sympathize on both counts -- great songs, but oh, those book scenes -- yet somehow I feel they are missing the point.

Motown could be ten times better than it is, but it would still be redundant. The definitive Broadway musical about the Motor City sound opened 32 years ago: Dreamgirls is a work of fiction that has far more truth to offer than the corporate comminqué that is the libretto of Motown. A powerful, tough-minded musical melodrama, Dreamgirls says plenty about soul music as a tool of assimilation and driver of social change. Its characters commit serial betrayals on their climb to the top, achieving a success that, in the end, doesn't really satisfy. It's a lively, crowded canvas, featuring an original score that accurately tracks the shift from rhythm and blues, or "race music," to the more accessible pop-soul sound that captured a generation's imagination with disco, waiting in the wings, ready to upend more than a few careers.

There's no way that any official biography could capture the gritty detail and canny social observations of Dreamgirls, although it must be said that Motown doesn't even try. Gordy's libretto, based on his own memoir, is a case of self-administered hagiography: It's the story of a nice, ambitious kid from Detroit who, emulating the heroism of Joe Louis, created a new sound and launched an armada of artists, all of whom left him in search of more money, more control, or just more. He falls hard and fast for Diana Ross, and vowing to make her a star, delivers on the promise, only to lose her to a $20-million recording contract. Really, he's a saint: In a show that never misses an opportunity to push the audience's buttons -- Walter Cronkite's announcement of John F. Kennedy's death is seen, and Marvin Gaye croons "What's Going On" while a riot unfolds around him -- a high point of unintentional hilarity features Gordy, shocked and saddened, saying that all the assassinated Martin Luther King wanted was to help his people. Looking deeply into his eyes, Ross reminds Gordy that, like King, he, too, has worked to raise up his people. His sense of the dramatic is exactly what you'd expect from the man who directed the film Mahogany.

Motown is full of this sort of thing. What it isn't full of is Gordy's messy personal life, which included three wives and eight children, including one by Ross. There's also not the slightest hint that a Motown artist ever received anything less than sterling treatment. Mary Wilson, who has some pretty acidic things to say about Gordy (and Ross) in her memoir, Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, is here treated as an all-around sourpuss who didn't know how good she had it. (She's luckier than Florence Ballard, the tragic, cast-off Supreme who is constantly accused of unprofessionalism without getting a chance to speak for herself.) As, one by one, Gordy's stars take off in search of greener pastures, we are invited to share his feelings of abandonment. The show features a hokey framing device, beginning in 1983, when, his business on the rocks, he refuses to be part of a Motown 25th -anniversary special; if you don't know the evening will end with a teary Gordy surrounded by his "family" of singers, then you really should get out more.

Yes, there are the songs, and a tasty collection they are, too, including "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Dancing in the Street," "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)," "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)," and "Shop Around," among others. But as rendered by an affable and talented bunch of impersonators, they sometimes lose the personality that made them so memorable. Among the principal characters, Charl Brown is a silky-smooth Smokey Robinson, and Bryan Terrell Clark's Marvin Gaye has an easy, seductive charm. Best of all is Valisia LeKae, whose Diana Ross is loaded with a natural hauteur, maturing from diva-in-training to superstar, infallibly convinced of her own divinity; you can call her Miss Ross. (Gordy, doing the gentlemanly thing, tries to blame their breakup on his too-diligent attention to business, but no soap; LeKae's Ross is too busy going places to worry about a negligent boyfriend.)

Among the others, only the sexily insinuating Mary Wells of N'Kenge really stands out. At the performance I attended, Raymond Luke Jr., one of two alternating child actors in the cast, wowed the audience as young Michael Jackson, but in a show that at all times threatens to turn into a Broadway edition of Legends in Concert (now playing at the Flamingo in Vegas), his felt like the least authentic performance of all.

In the thankless lead role, Brandon Victor Dixon's good looks, natural stage presence, and fine singing voice all serve to guarantee Gordy the story's center of gravity, even when all he has to say is a bunch of clichés about Motown being a family, or when one of his lieutenants is telling him with furrowed brow that times have changed and it's a new world. Played by a less charming actor, Gordy might come across as an untreatable case of narcissism -- he sings "To Be Loved," thus providing his main motivation for starting a company that earned him hundreds of millions of dollars -- and Motown is lucky to have Dixon to keep us in his corner.

A really zippy staging might help us forget the fact that Motown is really a timeline set to music, but the director, Charles Randolph-Wright, simply allows one scene to plod into another. (More than once, I thought wistfully of Michael Bennett, who knew how to make a show move like greased lightning.) The choreography, by Patricia Wilcox and Warren Adams, is best when replicating the signature moves of groups like The Four Tops; otherwise, Motown seems to have little use, and even less time, for production numbers.

Given a libretto that covers 45 years and roams all over the map, David Korins, the set designer, has gone minimal, coming up with a set of wood-lined portals that can reconfigure themselves in various ways. Other scenic touches include a forced-perspective Detroit residential street; a rear view of the Motown logo on a TV set; the house -- Hitsville, USA -- where the magic was made; a pair of very different recording studio interiors; and the wood-paneled den of Gordy's LA home. Daniel Brodie's evocative projections include footage of Joe Louis in the boxing ring; radio towers broadcasting the Motown sound across the country; a poster for the traveling show, The Motown Revue; and the logo for the old TV series The Hollywood Palace. This is one show where a lighting designer could run amok with glitzy effects, but Natasha Katz is too classy for that, providing instead a series of classically theatrical looks that make everyone on stage look good. If Peter Hylenski's sound design were at a pop concert, I would say it was first-rate; this is Broadway, however, and there's no avoiding the fact that a certain amount of clarity and transparency is lost in a wall of sound.

Motown, given its big advance sale, appears set to go platinum at the box office, and at the performance I attended the audience roared its approval. (And why not? Walking in, they know what they're getting. As the poster for Mamma Mia! says, "You already know you like it.") I guess there's nothing wrong with a glorified oldies revue like this, as long as you know what you're getting into. If all you care about is energetically performed pop hits of yesteryear -- the kind of show that indulgent West End reviewers invariably call "a marvelous night out" -- Motown might make the grade. (You might even find the terrible book scenes to be a hoot, if you go with the right crowd.) If you're looking for a seamless blend of powerful storytelling and memorable music, however, be warned: Motown is the tribute band version of Dreamgirls -- it almost looks like the real thing if you squint.--David Barbour