Ambassador Satch

by David Anthony Fox

We critics are forever contemplating half-full/half-empty glasses. So it is with Ambassador Satch. Since it¹s a show I¹d love to love -- and one that the rapturous first-night audience clearly adored -- I¹m going to be uncharacteristically generous, and start with the positive things first.

Half full: What a great idea to do a show about Louis Armstrong, perhaps the most influential of all jazz musicians, and a (sometimes berated) national treasure. And Satch is brimming with good will and talent. The first five minutes -- a snazzy Dixieland band snaking its way through the theater playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," and accompanied by a beaming, bejeweled-umbrella-carrying Armstrong (André De Shields) -- is the best opening number I've seen in ages. In fact, all the music making is fine, and De Shields' eloquent "Black & Blue" especially stands out. Harriett D. Foy (who plays all four of Armstrong's wives) is a feisty actress and singer, and makes a memorable moment of "Why Don't You Do Right?" Much of the connective patter is charming. Whether the one-liners are actually Armstrong's or not, they're funny -- and De Shields knows just how to play them. About his first wife: "Everybody thought Daisy was a ho. But I know better. [Pause.] She was a prostitute."

Half empty: Satch tries to be too many things at once: not only a concert, but also a biography and cultural history. There's a lot to take on here, including Armstrong's complicated role in the African-American community (by the 1960s, he was sometimes denigrated as an Uncle Tom) and his relationships with women (three troubled marriages and a final happy one). Satch gives us only enough detail to make the story seem like a cliché. And as good as De Shields is, he starts with two strikes out: His singing voice sounds nothing like Armstrong's inimitable one, and he can't play the trumpet. (Paul Grant, the band's excellent trumpeter, steps in.) Moreover, what De Shields does best -- novelty dancing -- is even further removed from Armstrong. He's dapper and elegant, by nature more like Belafonte than the rounder, raspier Satch.

So decide for yourselves. Certainly there's enough musical pleasure to keep the audience entertained, and on that note I'll add a final "half-full" thanks: to the terrific band, under the musical direction of polymath Terry Waldo, who also makes an appearance as a singer/actor.