A Wonderful World
Opening Night: November 11, 2024
Theater: Studio 54
Website: louisarmstrongmusical.com
Join Tony Award® winner James Monroe Iglehart and a talented ensemble cast as they bring Louis Armstrong’s incredible journey to life, from New Orleans to worldwide fame. This full-scale musical features a rich tapestry of characters, including the extraordinary women who helped shape his remarkable life and career. Be captivated by Armstrong’s timeless hits like “What a Wonderful World” and “When You’re Smiling,” performed by a large, dynamic cast. Don’t miss this spectacular celebration of music, filled with vibrant dance numbers, stunning sets, and unforgettable performances. Get your tickets now for an unforgettable night that honors the iconic man who defined an era.
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November 11, 2024
Though subtitled “The Louis Armstrong Musical,” the show, with a book by Aurin Squire, spends too little time exploring its subject’s interior life while plumping for his greatness as if the point were in doubt.
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November 12, 2024
“A Wonderful World” feels less like a story about Louis Armstrong the man, but a concert of the discography and a theatrical resurrection of the pageantry he left behind.
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November 11, 2024
Starring as Louis, Tony Award winner Iglehart is mesmerizing, becoming the physical embodiment of the trumpeter from his gravelly voice to his bubbly charisma.
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November 11, 2024
The shapeless and meandering new show “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical” opened Monday at Studio 54, and we can only be grateful that its creators left out the jazz legend’s childhood in New Orleans.
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November 11, 2024
The women are so barely drawn that we get no sense of who they are or why we should care about them.
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November 11, 2024
Wonderful World is too expansive in chronological scope to delve too deeply into the crucial question of what made Armstrong such an incomparable figure in the history of American music, but with Iglehart and a fine supporting cast of excellent singer-actresses portraying Armstrong’s four wives… the musical rarely gives us enough time to ponder what’s being left out. What we’re seeing on stage is too entertaining.
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November 11, 2024
In the case of A Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong comes marching into Broadway aboard an overstuffed bio-musical. The decision has been made to play all the expected notes at once, several times over.
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November 11, 2024
At the start of the new biomusical A Wonderful World, each of Armstrong’s four wives calls him by a different name, as though to suggest the interior multitudes of a performer who, in public, always wore a famously broad smile—partly as an invitation to joy but partly as a mask of comedy. The musical offers a pleasing depiction of that joy and that mask, if not of those multitudes.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 11, 2024
Alas, as depicted in “A Wonderful World,” the late jazz giant comes across as puzzlingly smaller than life, or smaller than Armstrong’s life, at least. Mr. Iglehart, whose sunny charisma would seem naturally suited to the part, is not to blame; the main fault lies, as it often does in jukebox hagiographies, with the book.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 11, 2024
As bio-musicals go, A Wonderful World doesn’t break any new ground, and the book by Aurin Squire is pretty much by-the-numbers, hitting most of the highs and lows spanning 70 years in Armstrong’s storied career. But as conceived by Andrew Delaplaine along with Christopher Renshaw (who also directed), there’s so much charm, artistry and buoyant entertainment here that we are riveted for the entirety of the show’s two and a half hour running time.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 11, 2024
James Monroe Inglehart is convincingly proving that Louis Armstrong is, no question, imitable.
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November 11, 2024
Come for the music in “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” the Satchmo show that opened Monday night at Studio 54. As for the throaty crooner’s life story, read a book instead. What’s on Broadway is largely a deflating and cobbled-together wife story that fails to capture Armstrong, the artist.
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November 11, 2024
In the Wikipedia age, information is not what audiences want so much as a point of view and, well, lots of songs and music. We still could do with less history and more time with Louis and his band.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 11, 2024
Book writer Aurin Squire and conceivers Andrew Delaplaine and Christopher Renshaw toggle between conventional bio-musical choices and more challenging ones, keeping A Wonderful World lively and interesting.
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