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Ephraim Sykes, as David Ruffin, with fellow cast members. (Promotional photos: Matthew Murphy)
A preview posted two weeks ago is below this update.
"They're going to make you love them -- again," a playful headline says above The Washington Post's review of Detroit playwright Dominique Morisseau's first musical, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."
The New York Post, also unable to resist temptation, starts: "Get ready — here they come!"
The Broadway show that opened last Thursday traces The Temptations' success and struggles as Motown Records artists five decades ago. The play earns mixed reviews, though a number of critics' praise the script (excerpts below).
Post reviewer Peter Marks says "this electrifying musical . . . proves to be two or three cuts above the standard-issue anthology pop musical." He salutes "writer Dominique Morriseau's dexterity at conveying each member's journey."
The Cass Tech and University of Michigan alumna is just the second black woman to write a Broadway musical script. (The pioneer was Vinnette Carroll, Tony-nominated creator-director of "Arms Too Short to Box with God" in 1976.)
"There's something aggressively current about this story," says the playwright, who listened to her parents' Motown music in Detroit.
The new show is based on "Temptations," a 1988 memoir by Otis Williams, the last surviving member. Morisseau also spent a "fun, lighthearted" day with him. "I felt like we connected," she tells Jonathan Mandell of a New York theater industry site.
"When I was reading Otis' book, I said: 'This is every artist I know right now,'" she recalls to David Browne of Rolling Stone at the Imperial Theatre on West 45th Street in Manhattan.
"We're all trying to figure out where do we stand with our art and our identity in this nation? Do we use our art to address these things or will it harm us?
"There's something aggressively current about this story now. It's actually scary."
There's nothing scary about a majority of reviews, though some critics are disappointed. "'Dreamboys' it aint," writes Frank Rizzo of Variety.
"The show mostly avoids the usual jukebox pitfall of jimmying in songs to reflect the plot in literal ways," says Ben Brantley of The New York Times.
Dominique Morisseau, who wrote the show’s book, is the gifted author of a cycle of smart, tough-minded plays based in her native Detroit, where much of "Ain't Too Proud" is also set.
Other samples of applause for the Detroit wordsmith, winner of a 2018 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant:
"The best of Motown was able to prove that music could be colorblind," a New York cable news station says.
► "A polished tribute:" Dominique Morisseau’s script essentially gives each man one main trait: Paul [Williams] has the slick dance moves, [David] Ruffin’s the one "addicted to the worst drug of all — the spotlight," and so on." . . . "Ain’t Too Proud" is a polished tribute ride to an act that keeps on going. -- Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Post
► "Wit, intelligence:" "Ain't Too Proud" is a sharp, bracingly written biographical story. . . . This jukebox musical not only has life, it also has wit, intelligence." -- Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast
► "Clarity and emotional involvement:" Gifted Detroit playwright Dominique Morisseau . . . recounts the group's ups and downs with clarity and emotional involvement, creating distinct, reasonably rounded characters. -- David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
► "Talented scribe:" Dominique Morisseau [is] a talented scribe whose other work reveals that she knows the heart and complexity of Detroit better than anyone else in the American theater. You get certain flavors here of what Morisseau can do, politically and aesthetically, but not near enough. -- Chris Jones, New York Daily News
► "Vastly entertaining:" Not only is it vastly entertaining, it reminds us how the best of Motown was able to prove that music could be colorblind even if the rest of the world wasn’t. -- Roma Torre, NY1 cable news channel
► "Important issues:" The show touches on important issues that affected the artists, defined their period and influenced the style and themes of their songs: racism in the South, the Civil Rights Movement, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; womanizing, abandonment, and physical abuse; recreational drug use, alcoholism, and suicide; and the War in Vietnam. . . The historical references . . . provide contextualization and insights without overwhelming the central story of the meteoric rise and popularity of the group. -- Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts
► Tweet from a Tony-nominated New York producer:
MAN did I love seeing the wonderful words of @domorisseau on that big Broadway stage, delivered by the magnificent cast of Ain’t Too Proud. This show DELIVERS. And TRANSPORTS. I laughed, I cried, I sang. Theater is magic.
— Megan Kingery (@megansarak) March 24, 2019
Original article, March 12:
Award-winning playwright Dominique Morisseau, a Cass Tech ('96) and University of Michigan graduate, is an essential contributor to a new musical about legendary hometown singers.
She created the story -- "the book," in theater jargon -- behind "Ain't Too Proud -- The Life and Times of the Temptations," opening next week in Manhattan's Times Square area. The glitzy show, in preview performances since Feb. 28, "follows The Temptations' extraordinary journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame," a blurb says.
Dominique Morisseau turns 41 this Wednesday. (Photo: CBS News screenshot)
It's Morisseau's first musical and her Broadway debut.
The Detroit writer, who has nine well-reviewed plays to her credit, spoke to Tracy Smith of CBS Sunday Morning about the show's relevance five decades after the Motown group's 1969 rise to fame.
"Here we are at this moment in their story and these young men are at a moment in their nation that's in great civic unrest. They're trying to navigate who they're going to be as artists, coming from a city that's also in great civic unrest.
"I thought that's where we are right now, that's where we are once again."
Morisseau's script builds a frame to showcase two and a half hours of timeless earworms that include "Can't Get Close to You," "My Girl," "Just My Imagination," "Get Ready," "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "Don’t Look Back,” "(I Know) I’m Losing You" and the title song.
The playwright, who turns 41 this Wednesday, now lives in Brooklyn with husband Jimmy Keys and often is in Los Angeles as a story editor for "Shameless," a Showtime series. Last year she won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," an honor sweetened by a $625,000 payment.
Her earlier works include a three-play Detroit series -- "Detroit '67," "Pareadise Blue" and "Skeleton Crew.
Visiting New York?
► The show opens March 21 at the Imperial Theater. Tickets are $49 to $169.
