The brothers George and Ira Gershwin, and DuBose Heyward wrote their opera in the 1930s and it was performed on Broadway for the first time in 1935. I have bits-and-pieces of memory of scenes from one incarnation of the opera: the 1959 movie with Sidney Poitier pushing himself around on a cart as a crippled Porgy chasing after Dorothy Dandrige as Bess that I likely saw on TV.

Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis as Porgy and Bess in the current Broadway musical.

A year or so ago at auction, I came across a Decca Records four-LP set from the 1935 opera, featuring Todd Duncan (Porgy), Anne Brown (Bess) and the Eva Jessye Choir. It was Decca Album No. 145, Personality Series. It apparently was the first of two volumes – this one released in 1940 and the other in 1942.

I picked it up because it was free and historical, but didn’t have a bit of interest in listening to it. The photo on the album cover showed black folks hanging out of windows and black men lying lazily around a yard. It looked exactly as I expected.

Some of the songs on the album were well-known, though: the lazy stroll of “Summertime (which I learned was written by Heyward)” and the brazen nonchalance of “It Ain’t Necessarily So (by Ira Gershwin),” “Bess, You Is My Woman,” and “I Loves You, Porgy (also by Heyward).” I always thought these were all written by the Gershwins.

I came back to the album today, ready to listen to some of its tunes but found that my old record player had speeds of 45 and 33 but not 78. I was inspired after having spent more than two hours over the weekend watching a new musical version of the opera called “The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess” on Broadway.

The cover of the 1940 Decca Records four-album set of songs from "Porgy and Bess."

A week or so ago I had turned up my nose when a friend suggested that she wanted to see “Porgy.” Why, I wondered. It was probably full of stereotypes– I see enough of those images on the auction tables – so why spend my money to see them in 2012.

Yet, I was curious. I’d never seen the play in its entirety, and so I warmed to the idea. I soon learned that the composer Stephen Sondheim had criticized the new production by director Diane Paulus and writer Suzan-Lori Parks, who revamped the original to make it more contemporary and fresh. He hadn’t seen the play but was reacting to their remarks about updating it. The musical opens Thursday, Jan. 12 at the Richard Rodgers Theater.

Sondheim’s comments – and the positive reviews the play is getting in previews – apparently sparked a lot of people’s curiosity. The matinee performance I saw was packed, and the audience gave the performers a standing ovation.

I stood and applauded them, too, for their performances, singing and choreography. But I’m still not sure how much I liked the play. It didn’t wow me. I didn’t cheer for any of the characters or empathize or sympathize with them. The 1935 opera played around in my head, and I couldn’t shake that indistinct notion of what it must’ve been like for the performers back then.

Photos from inside the 1940s Decca album shows Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, the Eva Jessye Choir and Alexander Smallens, conductor of the Decca Symphony Orchestra.

This new version was obviously updated. These folks, although poor, weren’t pitiful or beaten down. They showed deference to the white law enforcement with little of the Stepin-Fetchit-ness. These people lived their lives in their own swath of a community in Charleston, SC, called Catfish Row, where the men fished during the day and played craps at night, the women looked after them, and they all enjoyed their annual picnic on an island nearby. Interspersed were the killings of black men by the hands of other black men – then with blades instead guns.

The musical kept some of the commonly seen black characters: the overweight woman and the brutish man (fortunately, there were only one of both). When the male character, Crown – played by Philip Boykin – came out for his bows, the predominantly white audience booed him. That’s how well he played such an awful person. They also booed the two white police officers, who mildly terrorized the community.

Playbill noted that when the opera went on tour in 1936 and landed at the National Theater in Washington, DC, Duncan refused to perform before a segregated audience. (Another version of the story says Brown was the one who first refused.) The cast members held out until the theater agreed to desegregate.

Both Duncan and Brown were classical singers. Already a performer, he apparently was recommended to George Gershwin as a potential Porgy, while she was a music student at Julliard who applied for an audition. The original play was called “Porgy,” but Gershwin is said to have liked her so well that he filled out the role of Bess – and renamed the opera “Porgy and Bess.”

Todd Duncan as Porgy and Anne Brown as Bess in the 1935 opera.

The play was based on a 1925 novel “Porgy” by Heyward (who with his wife Dorothy wrote a play based on the book), who had grown up in Charleston. He was both hailed and criticized for his characterizations of black people - which were regarded as right on the mark or way off it.

At the play last weekend, Audra McDonald was her usual wonderful self; Norm Lewis was a very convincingly crippled Porgy, and David Alan Grier can actually sing (although I thought his character became a little too much of a caricature).

All in all, it is a production worth seeing.

Related posts:

1. The life sounds of soul music

I had seen several like it the day before, about eight of them, on the set of a raucous, loud, energized preview performance of the music of Nigerian artist Fela Anikulapo Kuti at a Broadway play bearing the single name of Fela! (Check out the video at that site). The set was a reproduction of the musician’s Shrine nightclub in Lagos, Nigeria, the walls extended out into the audience and decorated with drawings, baskets and masks. Putting us in the middle of the party.  The wall of white-faced masks was not far from where I sat with friends.

As I looked closer at the mask at auction Sunday, I saw that some of the white chalk had rubbed off, almost down to the wood. The black paint denoting hair around the edge was still intact, as were as the brows. The eyes were slits. This mask looked more like a monkey mask. I bought it, though, because it appealed to me.

The ones on the set at the Fela musical Saturday were Igbo maiden spirit masks, in the shapes of women’s faces and heads, some with defined hairstyles. The white chalk represented the color of the spirit, and the masks themselves symbolized beauty and peacefulness. In the Igbo cultures of Nigeria, they are worn by elaborately costumed men in ritualized dances to female ancestors.

On Satuday, in one especially powerful scene in the musical, the actor Fela (played by Kevin Mambo) marked his face with chalk - white circles around his eyes and mouth, lines crossing his face. He donned the markings for a surreal visit to the spirit world to talk to his mother (Mom, played by Lillias White, can sing!).

I came across Fela’s music some years before he died in 1997. I recall reading a review of one of his concerts in my weekly newsmagazine (I believe it was a review or story in Newsweek). When I read that he was a protest singer, I knew I wanted to hear his music and his lyrics (he wrote in a pidgin language so all Nigerians could understand his words). So I went out and bought one of his albums – an old copy of “Shuffering and Shmiling” from 1985. I hadn’t heard it in years before seeing the play. And hearing it once again reminded me of why I bought the album. Like the musical, it makes you want to move.

Fela’s Afrobeat rhythms were on full-blast-high Saturday, and the actor Fela owned the stage, infusing it with the personality of the man who was hated by the Nigerian government. The actor protested in song (“Zombie,” one of Fela’s most popular, which attacks Nigerian soldiers) and in monologues (including a long scene to show how far the government would go to flush out evidence against him). You can watch and listen to one of Fela’s actual concerts.

The lyrics were beautiful, the singing was superb and the dancers could really shake a tail-feather.

In his life and the musical, Fela railed against the Nigerian government,  and was beaten and jailed numerous times because of his stances. His Shrine nightclub was part of an independent commune he set up in Lagos in defiance of what he considered a corrupt government. The incident that had the most effect on him there was the 1977 death of his mother at the hands of soldiers.

If you’re in the New York area and want to party, stop by Fela! It opens Nov. 23 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater, 230 W. 49^th St.

Side note: This has nothing to do with the Fela concert, but is about the Igbo peoples. Legend says that when a slave ship landed off the coast of St. Simon’s Island, GA, the Africans on board, all Igbos – embarked, still in chains – made a decision. Rather than live as slaves, they walked back into the ocean together and drowned. Now, the place – called Ebo (or Ibo) Landing - is supposedly haunted, and spirits are said to still roam. 

St. Simon’s is one of my most favorite islands. My family spent Christmas there some years ago, and I located the site of the legend. Didn’t go alone, took my niece with me. What we found was a quiet serene place overlooking the Atlantic. Maybe the spirits are at peace.

Related posts:

1. A treasure trove of African masks
2. How authentic are my African masks?
3. Do I bring spirits home with me from auctions?