After Midnight is a Broadway musical that premiered at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 2013. The revue is based on an earlier 2011 revue, titled Cotton Club Parade, which ran in concert at Encores! in 2011 and 2012.
Overview
After Midnight is the Broadway production of Cotton Club Parade that premiered Off-Broadway at New York City Center's Encores! concert series in November 2011, starring Amber P. Riley in 2012 as the Special Guest Star and directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle with music direction by Jazz at Lincoln Center artistic director Wynton Marsalis. Cotton Club Parade played a return engagement in November 2012 at New York City Center Encores!. The Cotton Club Parade was conceived by Jack Viertel, artistic director of "Encores!", who said "When we started rehearsals for 'Cotton Club Parade' in 2011, we knew we had something very special in store for audiences. Now that we’ve wrapped up our second run of this show at City Center, I couldn’t be more proud to have the show come to Broadway." The revue takes place "after midnight" in New York's Harlem. It features jazz pieces by Duke Ellington, Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields and Harold Arlen, framed by the poetry of Langston Hughes. The show features an orchestra of 17 musicians, 25 vocalists, dancers and performers. It is headlined by a rotating list of performers.
Production
The Broadway production began previews at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on October 18, 2013 and opened on November 3, 2013 with special guest starFantasia Barrino, who performed through February 9, 2014. The production features Dule Hill as "The Host", Adriane Lenox, Karine Plantadit and Desmond Richardson. Direction and choreography is by Warren Carlyle, with Scenic Design by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Isabel Toledo, lighting by Howell Binkley, and sound by Peter Hylenski. Dancers and vocalists include: Julius "iGlide" Chisolm, Virgil J. Gadson, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Jared Grimes, Everett Bradley, Cedric Neal, T. Oliver Reid, Monroe Kent III, Carmen Ruby Floyd, Rosena M. Hill Jackson, Bryonha Marie Parham, Marija Abney, Phillip Attmore, Christopher Broughton, Taeler Elyse Cyrus, C.K. Edwards, Bahiyah Hibah, Erin Moore, Justin Prescott, Monique Smith, Daniel Watts, Danielle Herbert and David Jennings. The show was produced by Scott Sanders, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Furman, Candy Spelling, Starry Night Entertainment, Hal Newman, Allan S. Gordon and Adam S. Gordon, James L. Nederlander, Robert K. Kraft, Catherine and Fred Adler, Robert Appel, Jeffrey Bolton, Scott M Delman, James Fantaci, Ted Liebowitz, Stephanie P. McClelland, Sandy Block and Carol R. Fineman. Special guest stars after Fantasia Barrino included k.d. lang, Toni Braxton with Babyface, Vanessa Williams, Barrino and Patti LaBelle. The show closed on June 29, 2014, after 272 performances and 19 previews; LaBelle was the final guest star. Gladys Knight and Natalie Cole were set to join the cast as special guest stars but the show closed before their set dates.
Upon closing, Broadway Licensing acquired the rights for stock and amateur performance rights.
Stephen Holden, in his review of the Cotton Club Parade in 2011 for The New York Times wrote: "The revue’s solution to the debatable issue of caricature and at what point a broad performance becomes a demeaning minstrel-show parody is to rein in the extremes. But it is in no way sedate. If the show has no Nell Carter or Ruth Brown, it does have Adriane Lenox, who delivers the Sippie Wallace advice song 'Women Be Wise'... with a knowing tang.... Mr. Carlyle’s clean choreography connects variations of the Charleston with jitterbugging and a little break-dancing to suggest the continuity of styles without insisting on it." Elysa Gardner in her review for USA Today wrote: "...you get 90 minutes of honest, vital entertainment, delivered with enough breezy wit to mitigate the flashes of pomp." Linda Winer, in her review for Newsday, noted that the most important part of the revue is the band. She wrote: "When that push for slickness goes into overdrive, the ensemble can feel ragged.... Adriane Lenox is marvelous in such sardonic, been-around revelations as 'Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night.' The dancers, led by former Twyla Tharp star Karine Plantadit, are strong."
