ATC brings Harlem Renaissance to Arizonans with “Ain’t Misbehavin”
By Cathalena E. Burch. Originally published by the Arizona Daily Star.
For some, Arizona Theatre Company’s production of Ain’t Misbehavin’ will play out like a concert of the iconic 20th century jazzman Fats Waller’s greatest hits.
But Director/Choreographer Dell Howlett thinks you’ll get far more than that when the show previews on Sunday, Jan. 25; it continues through Feb. 14 as part of the 2026 Tucson Desert Song Festival.
“You will walk away knowing his side of the Harlem Renaissance, his connection to family and his role at the vanguard of the conversation of Harlem Renaissance and the human element of that,” said Howlett, who was the assistant director under Kent Gash when ATC last presented Ain’t Misbehavin’ in 2009.
Ain’t Misbehavin’ is not a jukebox musical; it’s a revue that turns Waller’s music into a roadmap to his life in early 20th century America. We experience his wit, captivating charm and indelible rhythm that defined the Harlem Renaissance through his songs — “The Ladies Who Sing With the Band,” “Spreadin’ Rhythm Around,” “Black and Blue,” and, of course, the seminal “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”
The musical debuted on Broadway in 1978 and earned three Tony Awards, including the coveted Best Musical.
In the ATC production under Howlett’s direction, “the relationship between the music, the audience and the actor takes us to a couple of different places,” said Music Director Abdul Hamid Royal, whose credits include the Tony-nominated Broadway musical Five Guys Named Moe, Sophisticated Ladies, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Jelly’s Last Jam.
“There is something for everyone; those who want to just listen to the music or to learn about Fats and his prophetic voice, and then there’s another door that Dell has created for the thinker to pull back the veil,” said Royal, making his Arizona Theatre Company debut.
Behind the veil takes the audience to the reality of Fats Waller’s life once the house lights came up.
“Songs like ‘Black and Blue,’ an extraordinary song that happens in Act 2, really pulls the curtain back on what took place once the curtain raised,” Howlett said. “Fats was still living in White America, experiencing Jim Crow laws. That’s all in the music and that is an experience that we approach each utterance of the show.”
Howlett and Royal said most of the Broadway musical-tested cast — Taylor Colleton (Water for Elephants, Hadestown); Keirsten Hodgens (SIX the Musical); Wilkie Ferguson III (original Broadway cast of Porgy and Bess); Anthony Murphy (The Wiz); and Aerie Williams (Off-Broadway’s Trevor: The Musical) — are experiencing Waller for the first time.
“To see them understand it intuitively, on a DNA level, it tells me that Waller is still speaking to us,” Howlett said. “There hasn’t been an artist able to do the things that Waller was able to do. We haven’t seen that level of genius, and not just genius in terms of composition, but genius in terms of performance, being able to, in the moment, translate comedy, pain, musicality, passion, all the things in that one moment of kind of alchemy. … I think young artists, especially young Black artists, as they’re building their relationship to Waller, I think he continues to open the door to possibility about what music can do, what we can be inside of music, and he points to something beyond the era that he’s in.”
“Waller’s music lives in the same sort of pantheon of ideas and creativity,” added Royal, a classically trained pianist who will be on stage throughout the play, recreating Waller’s Harlem stride piano style that inspired Thelonious Monk, Count Basie and others.
“He also helps us to feel whatever else it is that we’re feeling like in ‘Black and Blue,’ like in ‘Mean to Me,’ like “Find Out What They Like.’ … Fats was able to communicate who he was, where he lived, how he felt, and to also send out the kind of resonating energy that draws us today, and that’s what makes this music iconic.”