At a time when we are faced with more and more “this is my life” theatrical solo shows—offering up some vaguely remembered old timer, an actual one-time quasi-celebrity, or a new-to-us individual eager to spin a tale of their own particular scandal or disease—it’s awfully refreshing to spend 75 minutes or so with someone who actually led a ground-breaking existence. Beverly Johnson, whose Beverly Johnson: In Vogue is presently at 59e59, easily fits the latter category. Even a viewer with only a vague idea of who Johnson is, or was—and why she is, or was, or should be, In Vogue—is likely to find her tale compelling and be intrigued to learn how it all plays out.
There was a time, in another century, when glossy magazines were sold not online but mostly at newsstands, which—strange to say—could be found on street corners across the land and all around our fair city. Given the desire of magazine publishers to sell their wares (“boost the circulation”), editors knew that the photo on the cover sold copies. As it was in 1974, when Johnson left Buffalo for Manhattan. Beaming out from every newsstand were myriad fashion magazines with myriad blue-eyed, blonde supermodels with perfect teeth smiling at you.
Until one day when the cover of the pre-eminent Vogue turned the trade upside down with a beaming cover photograph of a model who was decidedly neither blue-eyed nor blonde. If Beverly Johnson was altogether unknown the day she appeared on the cover of that August issue of Vogue, she immediately became the fashion world’s newest supermodel, ultimately gracing a reported 500 or so magazine covers.
As a sudden celebrity, the present-day grandmother of six tells how she lived the high life of that glittery decade (Liza! Liz! Warhol! Halston! Cocaine!), managing to pull through; not unscathed, but at least in one piece. Once her prime modeling days were through, she went on to acting and writing careers. Notably, she used the power of her pen and her celebrity to write the 2014 Vanity Fair article “Bill Cosby Drugged Me, This Is My Story.” The so-called “America’s Dad” sued her for defamation, dropping the case as other accusations against him multiplied.
All of which is the story Beverly Johnson has to tell, and it is a worthy one. Unfortunately, she doesn’t tell us the story. She reads it. Perched on a director’s chair at the far side of the stage so as not to block the audience view of the upstage video screen, she peers through thick eyeglasses at a script and reads her life. Page after page, necessarily staring down into the music stand and away from the audience. She is glued to her script except when video clips crank up with regularity, at which point she swivels to watch them with us. Then it’s back to the music stand.
Beverly Johnson: In Vogue has been directed by Josh Ravetch, who is also credited as co-author. It’s hard to gauge the extent of his contributions, although he is likely to blame for the ill-assembled videos as well as the abrupt disembodied sound cues (music and spoken), which occasionally startle not only us but Johnson herself. If ever a performer needed a director to help them, aid them, and plead with them to look—at least occasionally—at the supportively friendly audience, this is the case. Ravetch is credited for serving in the same capacities on Carrie Fisher’s 2009 stage play Wishful Drinking, which worked out markedly better, perhaps because the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher had innate show biz ebullience.
Johnson has lots to say, bringing personality, celebrity, and high-octane experience to her evening of reminiscences. But Beverly Johnson: In Vogue is not a theatrical presentation. It is a reading; and it would be an exaggeration to term it a staged reading. More like an unstaged reading, with a seemingly uncomfortable star at its center.
That said, one of those video sections includes a long-ago letter to the model from Ruth Whitney, editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine: “Your face on cover after cover after cover after cover really did finally change the way our white readers thought of blacks.” Which in itself helps counterbalance the clumsy aspects of this ordinary evening with the extraordinary Beverly Johnson.
Beverly Johnson: In Vogue opened January 14, 2024, at 59E59 and runs through February 4. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
