STAGE REVIEW : ‘Jelly’ Struts Its Stuff at Mark Taper

There is so much inspired and unconventional singing and strutting in “Jelly’s Last Jam” at the Mark Taper Forum, that it seems grudging to say right off that George C. Wolfe’s musical extravaganza based on the life and death of jazz giant Jelly Roll Morton is still a work in progress. But given the quality of three-fourths of the stuff that’s there, it’s got every chance of progressing into a big fat hit. A New York transfer is a virtual shoo-in.

“Jelly’s Last Jam” is a reflection of the paradox that is Wolfe himself--at once fearless and brash, and sentimental and trite. He starts by placing us in the Jungle Inn, described as “a low-down club somewheres ‘tween heaven and hell” on the eve of Jelly’s death. Can’t get much more explicit than that. Then he introduces a Faustian character named Chimney Man (Keith David), a suave prepossessing devil’s emissary who looks four times Jelly’s size (the excellent Obba Babatunde plays the slender Jelly) and announces--in rhymed couplets if you please--that Jelly won’t come out of this one alive.

That’s the trite part. We know exactly what will follow, right?

Yes and no. We do relive portions of Jelly’s life pretty much as expected, but how we do it is another matter. If Wolfe the book writer has been predictable so far, Wolfe the director is not.

The rhymed couplets don’t help and a listing of the memory scenes in Act I would sound dismayingly hackneyed: flashbacks of Jelly as a boy, Jelly feeling abandoned after the death of his mother (Karole Foreman), Jelly kicked out of the house by his proud Creole grandmother (a splendid Freda Payne in a song sung in Creole called “The Banishment”), Jelly finding the world and the music, then finding love and losing it.

But Wolfe, who has said that he wanted to create a moral fable about “the black heritage that Jelly did not acknowledge” has taken these ordinary events and transformed them into a tenebrous and sentient field of magic. He has a gift, used to superb effect, for turning passive moments into active ones. And, like any good leader, he has surrounded himself with exceptional deputies.

Luther Henderson is responsible for the swinging musical adaptation and seamless additional composition. A six-person band, led by Linda Twine and suspended halfway between floor and ceiling, delivers the goods. Susan Birkenhead’s lyrics can be stunning, notably in a show-stopper called “Lovin’ Is a Lowdown Blues” and again with the comically sardonic “That’s the Way We Do Things in New York.” And Hope Clark provides sly, sinuous choreography.

Watch Babatunde wrap himself around a pool cue or the ubiquitous Hunnies honey their sultry way around the stage like a hip, scantily clad Greek chorus. But Wolfe makes sure he keeps us on our toes. If “pain is so much prettier when it’s sung,” some of it comes at us like a knockout punch--as in the mock-minstrel “Dr. Jazz” which closes Act I and where the entire chorus line is decked out in leering Al Jolson “Jazz Singer” masks.

Act I devotes itself pretty much to biography, but Act II yanks us back to the present and puts the screws on. Chimney Man closes in as Jelly’s defiance mounts and his life takes less rewarding turns. The piece darkens with, for a while, more mixed results. In expanding the Chimney Man’s presence, Wolfe re-engages the predictable. Lots of room for rethinking here.

Not until the brilliantly suggestive manipulation of “That’s the Way We Do Things in New York,” does the act really recover its satirical rhythm. Jerry M. Hawkins and Timothy Smith are terrific in that number as a changing pair of parasites who grow increasingly more sinister as they try to take Jelly for a ride. The rest of the act, with its leitmotifs and reprises, its interweaving of past and present, lovers, enemies, family and friends (as in “Lonely Boy Blues” and “Winin’ Boy”), careens broadly from exquisite invention (“I’m Here/You”) to the scrambled love duet of “The Last Chance Blues,” sung at cross purposes by old lovers Anita (Tonya Pinkins) and Jelly, helplessly fanning the ashes of a dead love affair.

The finale, no matter how unsurprising, has an unexpected gossamer beauty, but getting to that wafting “Dancing on the Moon” from the “colored wing” of Los Angeles County General where Jelly died in 1941 treads a lot of gray water. That’s where future work will need to be done.

George Tsypin’s black, movable scaffold of a set, enhanced by a variety of neon configurations (James F. Ingalls did the lights), suits the flexible idiom and somber psychological tone, reflected also in the glitz and deep, sonorous colors of Toni-Leslie James’ costume design. But this is one man’s show and that man is Wolfe.

“Jelly’s Last Jam” is not only his most ambitious effort to date, but shows that he can be just as heretical in a musical idiom as he was in the spoken one of his “The Colored Museum.” “Jam” is a work of much greater scope, and from the writing to the staging, proves Wolfe to be an artist of startling counterpoints who compulsively pushes the margins of precedent to get the job done. One expected him to be radical. But subtle?

In “Colored Museum” he lit a fire under African-American sacred cows. In “Jelly’s Last Jam” he’s expanded the range to include everyone’s stereotypes and sacred cows. Strong language is the weaponry in this high-tech theatrical warfare: Pinpoint the target and hit it dead-on.

* “Jelly’s Last Jam,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; matinees Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends April 21. $24-$30; (213) 410-1062, (714) 634-1300, TDD (213)680-4017. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

‘Jelly’s Last Jam’

Obba Babatunde: Jelly Roll Morton

Keith David: Chimney Man

Freda Payne: Gran Mimi

Tonya Pinkins: Anita

Leilani Jones: Mabel

Karole Foreman: Maman

Ruben Santiago-Hudson: Buddy Bolden

Stanley Wayne Mathis: Jack the Bear

Robert Barry Fleming: Young Morton

Phylliss Bailey, Patty Holley, Regina Le Vert: The Hunnies

Jerry M. Hawkins, Timothy Smith: Melrose Brothers, Agents

A Center Theatre Group world premiere, produced in association with Margo Lion and Pamela Koslow-Hines. Associate producer Corey Beth Madden. Director George C. Wolfe. Music Jelly Roll Morton. Book George C. Wolfe. Lyrics Susan Birkenhead. Musical adaptation and additional composition Luther Henderson. Sets George Tsypin. Lights James F. Ingalls. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Costumes Toni-Leslie James. Musical director Linda Twine. Choreography Hope Clarke. Production stage manager Mary K Klinger. Stage managers James T. McDermott, Lani Ball.