Williams & Walker reunite on stage at Morgan State
The legendary, iconic, groundbreaking celebrity duo of vaudevillians, Bert Williams and George Walker, comes back to potent and poignant life in a revival of Vincent E. Smith’s 1986 hit, the eponymously titled Williams and Walker, running April 24-26 at Murphy Fine Arts Center at Morgan State University. Directed by Dwight R. B. Cook, who joined me in the studio to talk about the show, the production also features musical direction by Eros Da Artiste and choreography by Mari-Andrea Travis.
Williams & Walker tells the remarkable-but-true story of George Walker and Bert Williams, a pair of pioneering performers, now inextricably linked in the eyes of history, who together managed to break racial barriers in American entertainment. As the first Black recording artists in 1901 and the first Black performers to write, produce, and star in a full-length Broadway musical in 1902, their legacy helped pave the way for the Harlem Renaissance and for legions of performers who have followed.
The production uses a combination of period music, dance, comic sketches from the duo’s Vaudeville heyday, and imagined conversation to paint an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of their life and legacy. It takes us back to the years around 1900 to look at the heights they reached and the pitfalls and pratfalls that got them there, the complicated professional challenges and choices they faced in their quest to pursue their art and forge ahead.
That legacy, and the story it would leave, faced difficult questions in 1910, when Williams was invited to integrate the iconic Ziegfeld Follies–but only on condition that he resumed his early career use of blackface. From there, the piece looks back at the performance history as well as the professional and personal relationship of the two pioneers–full of laughter and song and success, but also heartrending setbacks and private costs.
As the production advisory notes, and as my guest discussed in our conversation, the production does feature ideas and images, especially of the historical practice of blackface, that some audiences may find troubling or upsetting. Digging into the archival and sometimes-painful history of theater, and entertainment more broadly, will tend to do that.
You can hear director Dwight Cook’s thoughts on this and other aspects of the show in our conversation her:
Audio PlayerAnd for more information, as well as showtimes and tickets, go to https://events.morgan.edu/event/theatre-morgan-presents-williams-walker?
