An all-African-American touring company is traveling to Memphis on a showboat, the Calliboga Queen. When the boat is run aground in Tennessee, the company mounts a production of Gilbert and Sullivan'sH.M.S. Pinafore to raise funds to get it unstuck. Much of the musical consists of a play within a play, as the company presents a musically updated version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera; the boat pilot takes a major role as Sir Joseph Porter, First Lord of the Admiralty. Another actor sings and dances the role of Captain Corcoran, while the part of Josephine goes to an Andrews Sisters-style trio of women from the company chorus —each had been promised the role, so they join forces and play it simultaneously. The police arrest the company for performing without a license, and the case is taken to court in a scene involving excerpts from another Gilbert and Sullivan work, Trial by Jury.
Productions
The show was given a pre-Broadway tryout at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, early in May 1945. The production gave top billing to Bill Robinson and Avon Long. The show then opened at the Broadway Theatre on May 24, 1945. In 1939, Robinson had starred as the Lord High Executioner in Mike Todd's musical The Hot Mikado, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Memphis Bound marked his return to Broadway, in another vehicle based on Gilbert and Sullivan. John Wildberg, who had successfully presented Philip Yordan's Anna Lucasta with an African-American cast on Broadway the previous year, was producer; Robert Ross directed, assisted by Eva Jessye, with Vinton Freedley credited for "personal supervision" of the show. Memphis, one of numerous Second World War-era Broadway musicals created by white production teams for black casts, was the last such show to appear during the war. Most of the score was derived from the Gilbert and Sullivan original; the vocal arrangements and updated lyrics were by Clay Warnick, while the orchestrations and score were adapted by Don Walker. The show also included four original songs by Warnick and Walker—"Big Old River," "Stand Around the Bend," "Old Love and Brand New Love," and "Growing Pains"—written in a pastiche of existing styles. "Growing Pains," an original duet for Robinson and 8-year-old actor Timothy Grace, was strongly flavored by a Duke Ellington sound, while the Gilbert and Sullivan material was arranged as swing music with a boogie-woogie edge. Robinson interpolated his specialty, a dance on stairs, as a high point of the show. Avon Long, known for playing Sportin' Life in the 1942 Broadway production of Porgy and Bess, provided additional solo dancing, using a full-body movement style contrasting with Robinson's foot-based work.
Reception
John Chapman of the New YorkDaily News gave the Broadway production a rave review, saying "It has been too many years since I have seen a musical with the zip, the stomp, and the whoosh of Memphis Bound. … It's good-naured as a puppy, and frequently very smart." Wilella Waldorf of the New York Post was more critical of the book, commenting that though the adaptation of H.M.S. Pinafore was "interesting musically and often very funny," the show as a whole was inconsistent, with "no uniform pattern … set for the travesty." Life magazine's anonymous critic highlighted the contributions of Robinson and H.M.S. Pinafore, noting with amusement that both were 67 years old, but added that when neither were featured onstage, "the show gets very dreary." Bob Francis of Billboard magazine similarly praised the Pinafore segments and the stars over the original elements of the book, commenting: "If two actors could put Memphis over for a smash, it should be Robinson and Long. Unfortunately, the task is too heavy for a two-man job." Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing. During its run, Memphis moved from the Broadway to the Belasco Theatre. It closed on June 23, 1945, after 36 performances, losing money on its original investment. The show was hampered in part due to competition from Hollywood Pinafore, a George S. Kaufman musical comedy drawing on exactly the same Gilbert and Sullivan material. However, Kaufman's version, which opened exactly a week after Memphis, was a much more pronounced critical failure. "The Nightingale, The Moon and I," one of the numbers closely based on the Gilbert and Sullivan originals, was recorded in the 1990s for the compilation albumLife's a Funny Present.
