Audio By Carbonatix
It will help if you like cruise-ship activities–conga lines, audience-participation skits and sing-alongs. Five Guys Named Moe, now at the Auditorium Theatre, is the kind of raucous musical designed to bring out the silliness in you.
Jolly, extravagantly choreographed, riddled with jokes and sight gags, Moe is more music than musical. The whole point of the show is the songs by pre-rock pop star Louis Jordan, which have been strung together on a thin story line to give the evening a little shape.
Very little shape. A man named Nomax sits morosely in his room listening to his radio and contemplating the perfidy of women when all of a sudden out of the radio leaps No Moe, followed by several other guys named Moe: Big Moe, Little Moe, Four-Eyed Moe and Eat Moe. They have come to help the despondent Nomax think through his female troubles. First they give him tuneful advice about avoiding marriage (“Beware, Brother, Beware”); then, through the rest of the evening, they proceed to try to teach him to appreciate women and relationships, to give up drinking, and to decide if he loves the woman who walked out on him. (There are no women in the show.)
The distinguished Jordan was one of the few African-American singer-songwriters to make a significant crossover to white audiences in the Forties. He was famous for songs such as “Look Out, Sister,” “Saturday Night Fish Fry,” “Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” and “Push Ka Pi Shi Pie,” among others. Jordan also has been widely credited with influencing the generations of musicians that followed him, including early rock-and-rollers and today’s hip-hop and rap artists.
Moe, though, is strictly a nostalgic trip back in time. The whole show is slickly commercial, and all the songs have been sanitized musically. Nothing is too hip or too sensual. The humor is gentle, clean and sweet. The dancing is superb–plenty of swing-styled jazz dance, marvelous tap and spectacular Broadway moves. The dancing, choreographed by Charles Augins, makes the show, because all five Moes (even the portly Big Moe) move like silk on glass.
The performers create an amazingly intimate atmosphere between themselves and the audience, so that when the time comes to press people into a conga line, the task is accomplished with ease. People at the performance I attended seemed to appreciate the fun: The line got very long, there was a good deal of giggling, and it went on forever.
The show looks pretty good, too. The stylized comic-book set reminded me of the big city as seen by Red Grooms–oversized, wavy, off-kilter skyscrapers in bold colors.
But the main attractions are the five Moes themselves. Keith Tyrone as No Moe and Milton Craig Nealy as Four-Eyed Moe have beautiful, sonorous voices. Keith Bennet as Little Moe and Kevyn Brackett as Eat Moe are fabulous dancers whose every move seduces the eye, bringing welcome relief from all the fun.
Moe never gives the audience a real look at the heart behind Jordan’s authentic, gutsy music. But it’s a wonderful way to skim the surface.