*Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole,* June 27, 2025

Francesca and I saw *Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole" on June 27, 2025. It's a new muslcal about Nat "King" Cole, centered on the filming of the last episode of *The Nat "King" Cole Show,* which ran for 13 months between 1956 and '57. The show is written by Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor, directed by McGregor.

We're all fans of Nat "King" Cole, right? I'm also a fan of the actor who was playing him, Dulé Hill (as a *West Wing* fan, I have no other option). He struck an expert balance between doing an impersonation and giving a sincere performance (Meryl Streep as Julia Child will always be my example of this being done well). The cast was uniformly strong, there was loads of talent onstage and on the creative team, the songs are beloved standards from the American Songbook, beautifully arranged and played by a crackerjack band - - so what was the problem? Francesca loved it, she was really hit by the power of the show. I agreed there were moments that were brilliant and that the whole thing was well put together, well executed - - so what was the problem?

The problem, for me, was that the show was too confusing. It alternates between the TV show as it's being performed and broadcast live, the backstage drama while they're filming the show, and a parallel reality that Cole experienced, in which Sammy Davis Jr. was prodding him to stand up for what he believes in and not always give in and compromise. It was this parallel reality that bothered me. The transitions between the real world and the other world weren't well defined. I believe that some confusion and blurring of lines can be effective and satisfying for an audience but it has to be carefully calibrated, set up, and resolved on the part of the writers. This felt too slap dash, too loosey goosey.

The high point of the show was also a perfect example of the crux of the problem. Here's the situation: in the real world, Cole is in his dressing room during a commercial. He starts to type something, something angry, to get it out of his system. Sammy Davis Jr. comes into his dressing room and starts tap dancing in counterpoint to the typing. What starts as a duet for typewriter and tap dancer develops into a tap duet for the two characters, clearly created to show off the mad skills of Hill and Daniel J. Watts, the amazing actor playing Davis. It was thrilling, dazzling, everything you'd want a show-stopping tap number to be. But for me it didn't earn its glory because it didn't evolve out of the moment. It took me a while to get over, "Was Nat 'King' Cole really such a killer tap dancer...?" Maybe I'm too literal (clearly I am) but the show would have been better served by a careful delineation between the real world and the imagination. This could be managed through a subtle but discernable lighting change, a small cue in the music, any number of other methods. I should mention that the rest of the audience (Francesca included) didn't appear to be bothered one bit, they went with it.