Riveting. Arresting. Barry Shabaka Henley's performance as Louis Armstrong in Court Theatre's one-man-show Satchmo at the Waldorf is surely one of the great stage performances delivered in Chicago - or anywhere, for that matter.
Lone actors on stage can be dry - and we were only mildly curious about the real-life Louis Armstrong, among a handful of jazz performers who grew rich with his music. Born in 1901 in New Orleans, the son of a prostitute, Armstrong was the most important jazz improviser - the free-form restyling of a song's melodic line that is the essence of the form.
But it is not Armstrong's music (there is really very little of it here) that makes this such enthralling theater. It's Henley, a popular television and movie actor who has starred against Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, played the manager in the biopic Ali (with Will Smith) and as a U.S. customs agent (with Tom Hanks) in Spielberg's Terminal.
Henley would make a convincing Armstrong just sitting in a chair under a spotlight. His exacting impersonation of the trumpeter's low growl nails it. But as he spins the yarn that traces Armstrong's rags to riches life, Henley's skill as a story-teller (and credit here to Terry Teachout's script) draws in the listener.
The one-man-act is also leavened (again thanks to Teachout) by the appearance of two other characters: Armstrong's Jewish manager Joe Glaser, who led him to fame and fortune. And Miles Davis, the more cerebral and far less kindly jazz trumpeter. Both are also played by Henley, who changes characters by a power of voice as dramatically as if he had changed costume.
Henley's performance as the conniving Glaser who outfoxed the mob, is really off the charts. Under contract to Glaser, Armstrong performed for Al Capone in his Chicago speakeasies.
Miles Davis felt Armstrong was a sellout, too cordial with the white establishment. But he did give him his due as a jazz innovator.
These two characters provide relief, and a useful counterpoint, to Armstrong's view of the world. Big credit is also due to Charles Newell's refined direction.
The one-man show wows regardless of whether you liked the music of Louis Armstrong, or even knew that this jazz player was a rock star celebrity before rock appeared.
His long career which blossomed in the post World War II era, and really took off, especially among white Southerners, during the Jim Crow period, as Teachout's book tells it. Louis Armstrong is known these days by students and followers of jazz, or from his standard, "What a Wonderful World."
Satchmo at the Waldorf comes strongly recommended. It plays through February 7 at the Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago. www.courttheatre.com
