1981–1982 Broadway 1982–1983 US National Tour, Canada 1984 West End, Stockholm, Sweden
Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music was a 1981 Broadway musical revue written for and starring American singer and actress Lena Horne. The musical was produced by Michael Frazier and Fred Walker, and the cast album was produced by Quincy Jones. The well received show opened on May 12, 1981, at the Nederlander Theatre and after 333 performances, closing to go on tour on June 30, 1982, Horne's 65th birthday. Horne toured with the show in the U.S. and Canada and performed in London and Stockholm in 1984.
Background
Lena Horne (1917–2010),[1] is an American singer and actress. Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a band singer and nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood where she had small parts in numerous movies, and much more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather (1943). Due to the red scare and her progressive political views, she was blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood. She returned to her roots as a nightclub performer. In the 1960s she participated in the March on Washington and performed in nightclubs and television. She announced her retirement in March 1980 and performed a two-month farewell tour of the United States.[2] Director Arthur Faria discarded the multi character script called Lena's World and conceived for her a one-woman show which became Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music-
Format
Throughout the show Horne sang and danced to Tin Pan Alley songs, jazz standards, music from films in which she had appeared, and songs written for her. The show sought to portray Horne's life from her beginning in show business to the present. During the show she spoke of the racism that she had encountered, describing how Hollywood producers told her she opened her mouth too big when she sang and devised a makeup for her, Light Egyptian, which was applied to white actresses such as Ava Gardner and Hedy Lamarr, who took roles that Horne could have possibly played.
Horne performed her signature song, "Stormy Weather", twice in the show, the first time more subdued than the second.[3] She was accompanied by dancers and backup singers. Costumes were designed by Giorgio di Sant' Angelo.
Response
Critical reception
The Broadway production opened at the Nederlander Theatre on May 12, 1981, after thirteen previews, and met with a positive critical response. Stephen Holden, reviewing the album of the show in Rolling Stone, wrote that Horne had "turned the conventions of the one-person extravaganza inside out...Instead of a self-glorifying ego trip, her performance is a shared journey of self-discovery about the human cost (to the audience as well as the singer) of being a symbol", adding that Horne's singing "hits peaks of ferocity, tenderness, playfulness and sheer delight that would have seemed unthinkable in her glamour-girl days...her performance here is a sustained cry of affirmation, and because that affirmation acknowledges the bitterness, cynicism and toughness of the world, it's exceptionally moving in ways that conventionally optimistic musical celebrations rarely are".[4]
Also reviewing the album, Mike Freedberg of The Boston Phoenix noted that in Horne's best songs, "she acts out the lesson of her show: how her daughters should make love and why--to transform anger to pride, to feel themselves taking charge. Horne goes after her lyrics as if they were her lovers, seducing them with a furious, righteous soulfulness."[5]
Newsweek described Horne as "the most awesome performer to have hit Broadway in years",[2] while The New York Times said she "transforms each song...into an intensely personal story that we've never quite heard before".[3]
