Broadway is seeing trees of green and red roses too. The story of American icon Louis Armstrong is being told onstage in A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. The production is led by Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart.
Louis Armstrong’s innovative musicianship and incredible charisma as trumpeter and vocalist would lead him from the early days of jazz in his native New Orleans to five decades of international stardom. A Wonderful World tells the story of Armstrong’s blazing musical career from the perspective of his four wives, who each had a unique impact on his life. It features beloved songs he recorded and made popular, including “What a Wonderful World” and “When You’re Smiling,” among many other favorites.
Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), widely known by his nicknames "Satchmo," "Satch," and "Pops," was a legendary American trumpeter and singer. A towering figure in the world of jazz, Armstrong's career stretched over five decades, encompassing multiple pivotal periods in jazz history. He earned numerous honors, including a Grammy Award in 1965 for Hello, Dolly! and a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972. Armstrong’s influence extended beyond jazz, impacting various musical genres and earning him inductions into prestigious institutions such as the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
The musical's premiere was presented by Miami New Drama in 2021 at the Colony Theatre in Miami Beach, Florida. It later played in New Orleans at the Saenger Theatre and in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in 2023.
If you love bio musicals, American history, and jazz music, this is the musical for you.
Though a team led by Branford Marsalis and Daryl Waters has written hot arrangements and rich orchestrations for a nine-person band, including the great Alphonso Horne on lead trumpet, the program of 30 or so songs and samples cannot do deep justice to a man who spent 50 years at the converging middle of American music. Nor can a script that flips too quickly from one momentous change to another, as if it too were a jukebox. When a marriage descends from elation to desolation in a mere five minutes, no matter how sincerely Iglehart plays it, it’s as if there were no marriage at all.
A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, starring a terrific James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton) as the legendary Satchmo, opens on Broadway tonight at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, and if it doesn’t escape every pitfall of the jukebox musical, it certainly comes closer than most. Wonderful World is too expansive in chronological scope to delve too deeply into the crucial question of what made Armstrong such an incomparable figure in the history of American music, but with Iglehart and a fine supporting cast of excellent singer-actresses portraying Armstrong’s four wives – Dionne Figgins as Daisy Parker, Jennie Harney-Fleming as Lil Hardin, Kim Exum as Alpha Smith and Darlesia Cearcy as Lucille Wilson – the musical rarely gives us enough time to ponder what’s being left out. What we’re seeing on stage is too entertaining.
| 2020 | Regional (US) |
Colony Theatre World Premiere Regional (US) |
| 2024 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical | James Monroe Iglehart |
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