About two-thirds of the way through Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, Dulé Hill as the singer famous for singing but not dancing and Daniel J. Watts as Sammy Davis Jr., famous for singing and dancing, execute a tap routine, choreographed by Jared Grimes when the production was being developed in Los Angeles and now here in its third production.
The terpsichorean duet, which has the effect of two tornadoes battling each other for dominance, is an out-and-out sensation. It’s also one of the musical’s (or is it a play with music?) two appealing features. The other is Hill’s singing, an extremely close approximation of Cole’s (apparently not inimitable) silken baritone. It’s a sound so soothing it resulted in enough Capital records sold that the company headquarters came to be known as “The house that Nat built.”
It needs to be said that the Hill-Davis sequence is also a metaphor. It stands for Cole’s progress through a period of his life when he was confronting or, perhaps not confronting, racial issues blotting his outwardly successful career. At the time, many of his peers were after him to be more vocal on the increasingly troubled conditions.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Cole’s being forced to own up to them is the reason for the work Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor have fashioned–certainly for all the right reasons. (A question quickly arising is: How many of today’s audiences are familiar with Cole, who died in 1965 at 45?) The authors are interested in where Cole fit into the civil rights movement, whether he was as publicly active as the era demanded, as others believed he should—good friend Davis, among them.
There’s the crux of a work that takes place at the taping of the “Nat King Cole Show,” the first television variety hour accorded a Black performer and cut short after one season, mostly because so few advertisers wanted to support a program that, it was feared, would have trouble gaining ratings in the South. (The show began at 15 minutes, not unusual those days, and, mid-run, was extended to 30 minutes.)
So there Cole is at the taping of the final show, unsure how to face the truth of the cancellation. He’s also a man once beaten during a Birmingham, Alabama concert and as a man who saw the n-word burned on the lawn of his home in LA’s restricted Hancock Park section.
Davis and other performers—Peggy Lee (Ruby Lewis), Betty Hutton (Lewis again), Eartha Kitt (Krystal Joy Brown), Billy Preston (Mekhi Richardson), daughter Natalie Cole (Brown)—are due to help him put the finishing touches on the historic enterprise.
So what do Domingo, who isn’t on stage, and McGregor do with the facts? They create a septic studio atmosphere overseen by a domineering, even slyly racist producer (Christopher Ryan Grant, unstinting on the thankless assignment), who’ll say anything to get what he wants. Some of what he wants runs to Cole’s continuing to have his face powdered (this is factual) to minimize his skin shade.
There’s a stage manager/rogue cameraman (Elliott Mattox) who keeps shoving people around, as if any cameraman ever behaved quite so improperly. (The upstage orchestra, playing John McDaniel’s treatments of supposedly Nelson Riddle arrangements, is fine. It’s Cole who brought mastermind Riddle to Frank Sinatra’s attention.)
Perhaps the worst of the characters Domingo and McGregor concoct is Davis. Supposedly, he’s present for persuading Cole to raise not only that silken voice but his consciousness. What he unfortunately becomes is a nuisance, constantly pushing himself into routines and rapidly changing costumes (Katie O’Neill, the costumer). This Davis emerges as an insult to the original.
Also annoying is a segment constructed on Cole’s once saying that “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” During this turn, the entire cast stomps around the befuddled Cole as if exorcising demons that have been summoned to wise him up.
In sum, what’s now on view, directed by McGregor is—to invoke the politest word—embarrassing. (There are worse that would apply.) Domingo has described Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole as a “fever dream.” Perhaps he and McGregor, who directs, should have lowered the temperature rather than sullying, as they have, the Nat “King” Cole memory.
Are there any other mitigating attractions? There are Hill’s vocals. He sings several of Cole’s signature chart-toppers, delivering entirely his 1949 winner, “Nature Boy.” (A better play might have followed how Cole came to record the mystic Eden Ahbez song.) Sadly, he doesn’t get through the entire “Mona Lisa” (Ray Evans and Jay Livingston), which won the 1950 best song Oscar but might not have if Cole hadn’t sung it to Top 40 acclaim.
On the other hand, little or no mention is made of Cole’s long-standing accomplishments as a foremost jazz pianist, heading the Nat King Cole trio. Here, Hill only sits at a piano rarely. Oh, well, there’s always YouTube.
Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole opened May 20, 2025, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through June 29. Tickets and information: nytw.org
