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‘Jelly’s Last Jam’ Review: Pasadena Playhouse Production Brings a Too-Rarely Revived Classic Jazz Musical Back to Rousing Life
'Jelly's Last Jam,' a revival of George C. Wolfe's '90s jazz musical, is further indication of why the Pasadena Playhouse deserved its own Tony.
But while it demands a casting director dredge up a small army of inordinately talented singers and tap dancers, it also has a Wolfe book concerned with race, ego and self-implosion, which make it more of a natural for the Taper (where, in fact, the show first opened back in 1991, before transferring to Broadway). With that major spoiler out of the way at the outset, Jelly Roll is led back through the events of his life by the Chimney Man, one of those pesky afterlife guides who insists on making the newly departed confront their misdeeds, when they might rather be having a more heavenly NDE. Director Kent Gash and choreographer Dell Howett let no dull or insufficently staged moments transpire in a show that is always finding life-saving delight in the power of dance, despite the Chimney Man’s best efforts to gently nudge the hero off this mortal coil.
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