Review: AIN'T TOO PROUD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE TEMPTATIONS at National Theatre
Formulaic but fabulous, this touring Broadway hit runs through June 22
By: Alexander C. Kafka Jun. 18, 2025
On the downbeat at Studio Theater in Paradise Blue, playwright Dominique Morisseau depicts the unraveling of a jazz club in 1949 Detroit. On the upbeat a mile away at The National Theatre in Ain’t Too Proud, Morriseau renders “the Life and Times of the Temptations” starting in 1960s Detroit.
Downbeat or upbeat, whatever the genre or the decade, Morriseau reminds us that artistic agonies and ecstasies are bundled together as tightly as the longing and despondency of a love ballad. “There’s no progress without sacrifice,” says Otis Williams (Rudy Foster), the founder and lone survivor of the original Temptations and the author of a memoir on which Ain’t Too Proud is based. The famed Motown bass lines and high-hat heartbeat of the core group’s rise and fall drives the jukebox juggernaut in this Broadway touring production, but it’s when the music occasionally stops dead that the heartache stabs deepest.
Through the ups and the downs, this formulaic but fabulous evening – equal parts drama, tribute concert, and fan rally – had Tuesday night’s boomer-heavy clientele swaying and testifying from their seats. The 31 classic musical numbers, over two and a half hours of stage time, were clearly wired through the audience’s auditory cortexes straight to their souls.
Ushering us through the tale, Foster, as Williams, is earnest and compelling. In a story as old as artistry, he strives to brace himself and his fellows to the promise of their talent against the pull of relationships, parenthood, booze, drugs, lust, aging, illness, politics, and – most toxic of all – egos. Would that the allusions to racism, protests, and war were from yellowed pages of history and not all too current, but have you opened your news app today?
Rounding out the “classic five” Temptations Tuesday were Bryce Valle as silky-smooth baritone Paul Williams; Lowes Moore as Eddie Kendricks, the feisty tenor with the golden falsetto; Corey Mekell subbing in valiantly and memorably as the volatile tenor David Ruffin; and Jameson Clanton, sweet and funny as bass Melvin Franklin. Franklin’s comic timing and facial expressions provide many of the saga's lighter, gentler moments. (And no matter how deep and manly the voice, we learn, a wise son best heed his momma.)
Helping anchor the narrative through different iterations of the group are Kerry D’Jovanni as the savvy Motown monarch Berry Gordy and Colin Stephen Kane as the Temptations’ longtime, oft-harried manager Shelly Berger. Jasmine Barboa, as Josephine, brings home the flinty strength, bitterness, and sorrow of marriage to Otis.
The large supporting cast swirls in and out as the Cadillacs, The Supremes, assorted lovers and family under the brisk direction of Des McAnuff, Sergio Trujillo’s sharp, tight, Tony-winning choreography fueling the momentum. It’s great fun watching the evolution of the group’s moves and their threads (Sue Makkoo’s costume designs dazzle) from doowop to psychedelic soul.
Tuesday, a few lyrics and lines got swallowed, and the vocal stylings around some numbers like “If You Don’t Know Me by Now” were a little needlessly baroque and overwrought. But music director Eli Bigelow and his four bandmates crisply carry the iconic songs and interstitial beats, and the synth-rendered strings, horns, and flute sound impressively credible. Refreshing, too, Jeff Human’s sound design is robust but not overamped.
The drama sometimes tilts toward melodrama and the whole project, as jukebox musicals generally do, has an at-times cloying, self-congratulatory scent. But hell, look at the numbers. Fifty-plus albums, five Grammys, 109 singles – on the R&B charts, 71 of those Top 40s with 15 hitting No. 1.
For all that, such stories’ time-honored lesson around fame and fortune is, as Paul says, that “you could be on top of the world and still feel beneath it.”
In other words, for these run-away children with run-away imaginations, the palpable sorrows ballast the boasting. In life, love, art, and ambition, it’s right there in the label atop the chart. There’s no rhythm without the blues.
**
Run time: Two hours, 50 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission
Photo: (L–R) Jameson Clanton, Lowes Moore, Jamal Stone, Rudy Foster, Bryce Valle, from the national touring company of Ain’t Too Proud. ©2024, Joan Marcus.
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