By Samuel L. Leiter…
This jumbled fever dream undermines Nat King Cole’s legacy with tonal confusion, miscast mimicry, and emotional detachment.
As a teenager, I eagerly tuned in to “The Nat King Cole Show” on television in the 1950s, awestruck by the effortless elegance and vocal warmth of one of America’s great pop musical stylists. Decades later, my enduring admiration for Cole—his composure, charisma, and incomparable sound—remains intact. Unfortunately, Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, the Off-Broadway biomusical now playing at the New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village, does little to honor his legacy. Described in the script as a “fever dream,” the show delivers a frantic, tonally scrambled mix of caricature and labored symbolism, all in the name of theatrical innovation. For all its energy, Lights Out feels less like a tribute than a misfire—a calculated showcase in search of conviction.
First produced in 2017 at People’s Light in Pennsylvania and later revised for a 2019 run at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, the show is the brainchild of the talented actor Colman Domingo, now seemingly everywhere, and Patricia McGregor (who also directs). Its long gestation and increasingly ambitious aspirations (a Broadway transfer has been hinted at, though nothing official has been announced) suggest a production trying to muscle its way into the tier of jukebox-biographical prestige. But it lacks both the structural rigor and creative voltage to reach that level. Its script wobbles between earnest biography and surrealist fantasy, framed by the premise of Cole, on the final night of his short-lived NBC television show in 1957, confronting his personal and professional anxieties as the studio lights dim.
That premise—compelling in theory—translates into a scattered theatrical reverie, with Cole (Dulé Hill, “The West Wing”) visited by a procession of figures from his past and psyche, including his gifted daughter, Natalie, Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis, Jr., and the conventional studio execs. Rather than sharpening our sense of the man behind the legend, the conceit diffuses it, burying his complexity beneath a jumble of stylistic flourishes. Hill, a versatile performer with a dancer’s skills and natural charm, brings athleticism to the role; with his marcelled wig, he even resembles Cole more than expected. However, his attempts to evoke Cole’s chain-smoking habit are visibly awkward. At one point, he mimics lighting a cigarette by holding it well away from his lips while applying the flame—an oddly stilted gesture in a production full of them.
Moreover, Hill’s tap dancing—though polished—feels at odds with the essence of Cole, whose artistry lay in the silky eloquence of his voice rather than in flash or footwork. Choreographer Edgar Godineaux offers some lively routines, but they serve spectacle more than story. Unlike Bobby Darin—currently receiving a more cohesive Broadway showcase in Just in Time—whose physical verve mirrored his musical exuberance, Cole projected a more internalized magnetism. Hill approximates some stylistic notes, but never captures the fullness of Cole’s distinctive sound, particularly in John McDaniel’s uneven arrangements. Where Jonathan Groff’s Darin benefits from stylized singing that sidesteps mimicry, Hill’s Cole lacks both the color and the core of the voice he’s meant to summon. Unlike the title of one of Cole’s biggest hits, it’s entirely forgettable. And forget as well hearing anything that hints at Cole’s estimable jazz piano gifts—they’re entirely absent.
Arguably the show’s weakest element is its treatment of Cole’s music. Classics like “Unforgettable,” “Nature Boy,” and “Smile,” not to mention what’s done to “Mona Lisa,” emerge only sporadically, and seldom with emotional resonance. Some numbers are awkwardly shoehorned into the action—“I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” is bent into a narrative pretzel that barely supports its own weight. Just in Time succeeds where Lights Out stumbles, integrating music and storytelling with rhythmic precision and stylistic unity. That show understands the mechanics of musical theatre. Lights Out, by contrast, zigzags from one sketch to another, more interested in effects than coherence.
Much of the intended humor misfires, especially the fake-commercial interludes spoofing 1950s ads for toothpaste and cigarettes. These segments, meant as sardonic commentary, instead land as tone-deaf interruptions, undermining the show’s more serious ambitions. If this is meant to reflect Cole’s internal reckoning with racism and artistic compromise, it ends up diluting both into strained irony.
The supporting cast yields mixed results. Krystal Joy Brown offers a suitably feline Eartha Kitt and a girlish Natalie Cole—adequate, if not particularly vivid. Ruby Lewis fares worse as Peggy Lee and Betty Hutton. Her Betty Hutton, performed with a jarringly brash Brooklyn accent, shares “I Can Do Anything Better Than You” in a number bordering on caricature. Hutton—whose duet of the song with Howard Keel is on YouTube, was definitely brash, but she was also charmingly convincing. As for Daniel J. Watts’s Sammy Davis, Jr., the less said, the better: his hyperactive, grinning interpretation reduces Davis to a clownish cartoon, devoid of the finesse that characterized Davis during the years depicted here.
Narratively, the show drifts. There’s no defined throughline, no meaningful progression. The fever dream motif allows for erratic shifts in tone and pacing, but few moments of clarity or revelation. We’re offered glimpses of Cole’s frustration with network interference, the burden of performing for white audiences, and his struggle to maintain dignity amid constraint—but none of these themes are explored with sustained dramatic weight. Instead, the show settles for mood and metaphor over insight.
In the end, Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole is a blur of overdetermined choices that cloud, rather than clarify, its subject. For someone like me, who grew up watching the real Cole radiate composure and artistry, the production prompted a return not to reflection, but to the recordings themselves. As I write, his music plays once again—still potent, still moving, still unmistakably his.
The show may have Broadway in its sights, but in its current form, it lacks the dramatic punch, directional focus, and musical unity to make the leap. Call it a fever dream if you will—there were times when my own eyelids felt tempted to close.
If Nat King Cole is now ripe for a jukebox musical, can Johnny Mathis be far behind?
Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole is playing at the New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. Fourth St., NYC, Through June 29
Photos: Marc J. Franklin