Smokey Joe’s Café
If SMOKEY JOE'S CAFÉ was a newly-written musical it would be hailed as one of the greatest pieces of songwriting ever done for the Broadway stage. The fact that the show is a collection of pop songs written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the 1950s and '60s is no less remarkable. This material, without the aid of a book stringing dramatic action together and without ever being intended to exist as a coherent body of work on its own, provides the basis of an electrifying performance that recapitulates a golden age of American culture.
The 38 songs performed by the musical's cast of nine performers include a series of hits forged in the memory of the era, including "Hound Dog," "On Broadway," "Charlie Brown," "Love Potion #9," "Jailhouse Rock," "There Goes My Baby," "Yakety Yak," "Kansas City," "Spanish Harlem," "Poison Ivy" and "Stand By Me." But the true genius of the Leiber/Stoller collaboration becomes evident as the lesser-known material takes its place proudly beside the hits and fills out the production with a series of musical surprises that keep the production speeding along.
The songs of Leiber and Stoller are perfect material for the stage. Each one is a self-contained storyline written around a sturdy, hummable melodic hook. The classic themes of love won, lost and imagined, dovetail with humorous set-pieces and slice-of-life cameos. Stories of wanderlust, aspiration and nostalgia are neatly capsulized without ever straying into bathos and cheap sentimentality. This combination of deeply-felt emotion, leavened by the light-hearted determination never to take anything too seriously, makes for great pop music as well as compelling musical theater.
Date: October 14-17; 19-24; 26-31
Price: $30
*Show dates, times, and prices are subject to change.
