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A Wonderful World Is Also a Familiar One
James Monroe Iglehart does a fine job embodying Louis Armstrong in a show that’s anything but improvisational.
Then we’re off to 1920s Chicago, where Louis meets his mentor, King Joe Oliver, and his second wife, the pianist Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming, finding poise in a part that consists of a lot of stiff lectures) teaches him to value his self-worth and becomes his business manager. Each of these installments tend toward Wikipedia-subhed levels of condensation, but none more so than the final ride, from the 1940s to the 1970s, generally set in New York, in which Armstrong ends up with the Cotton Club dancer Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy, given the least range to tread as she’s introduced so late), navigates the civil-rights movement, has a run-in with organized crime, and has a big comeback by way of “Hello, Dolly!” You can see why A Wonderful World ’s structure might sound compelling in a pitch meeting. As in that moment, Squire’s and Iglehart’s performance tend to be most compelling when they’re challenging the common image of Armstrong as a naïvely good-humored character who was complaint with the racist expectations of the entertainment industry — in brief glimpses, we see someone more canny and more troubled (as he in fact was in life) than pure eternal optimist.
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