WASHINGTON — As Broadway announced its 2015 Tony nominees on Tuesday, folks in our area were busy cleaning up from riots that rocked Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray.
Indeed, the bright lights of Broadway appear dim compared to the flames of burning cars.
But if the original Wiz was right in his eternal Wiz-dom — that the Indo-European root of “Entertainment” means “to hold” and “to change” — a very special play has the chance to hold our attention in the nation’s capital and change our hearts at this most difficult time.
“Memphis,” which won Best Musical at the 2010 Tonys, brings its national tour to the Warner Theatre for three timely shows at 8 p.m. on Friday and at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday. It takes place in the underground clubs of the segregated ’50s, where a white disc jockey, Huey Calhoun (Daniel Hines), falls in love with a black singer, Felicia (Zuri Washington), sparking a rock ‘n roll revolution.
“It’s loosely based on the life of Dewey Phillips, who was one of the first white DJs to play black music in the ’50s in Memphis,” says cast member Jonathan David Randle, a D.C. native. “His whole aspiration is trying to bring music together to all races.”
Randle plays the role of a quiet bartender named Gator, which he played locally in a production at Toby’s Dinner Theatre before landing a gig in his first national tour.
“Gator happens to be one of the more subdued roles,” Randle says. “He witnessed his father being lynched at a young age, and that’s what caused him to be mute. … He looks down on the white DJ, but along the way, he creates a friendship with Huey.”
You might think it’s tricky to play a character who’s mute, but Randle says he relates to Gator’s soft-spoken manner.
“He’s actually a mirror image of me in a lot of ways, because in life, I can be very quiet and very subdued,” Randle says. “When we feel like we want to emote about something, we don’t necessarily speak about it, our faces usually express it.”
The national tour has been a dream come true for Randle, who was born at Howard University Hospital and raised in Prince George’s County, where he now resides.
He started acting around age 12, training at Duke Ellington School for the Arts, then studying theater at Howard University.
“It’s humbling,” Randle says. “I had to do it, simply for the experience and the exposure and just being able to travel the country and places I haven’t been before. You really can’t beat that.”
These days, you can find him living out of his suitcase, riding from town-to-town on a pair of tour buses, one for the cast and one for the crew.
“Once you get the handle of going hotel to hotel, city to city, we get used to it,” he says. “I know we’re all actors and we all know how to manipulate relationships on stage, but at the same time, having a good bonding experience outside the stage is what makes it much better.”
So far, the tour has included Washington state, Nevada, Montana, Iowa, Michigan and Florida.
After the three shows in D.C., it’s off to Indiana, Ohio and New Jersey, where the tour wraps.
What’s next for Randle after “Memphis” ends its run?
He plans to move to Los Angeles to pursue a film career, bitten by the bug of a recent cameo on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” where he had a small speaking role in Episode 9 of Season 2.
“This was actually the episode where Freddy the character got written off,” Randle says, recalling the scene where Frank Underwood’s favorite chef was forced to close Freddy’s BBQ, a blue-collar escape from the fancy (often empty) talk on Capitol Hill. “I was kind of sad about that actually.”
Randle is right. Loss is sad, be it a fictional rib joint in D.C. or a burned-out convenience store in Baltimore. Standing at the “House of Cards” shooting location on Baltimore’s Greenmount Avenue, you can reflect on the heartbreaking riots unfolding nearby and choose to wallow in hopelessness. Or, you can take a page from “Memphis,” remembering what sweet music we can make…together.
