- Performances: 1,165.
- Open / Close: October 19, 2009 – August 5, 2012
- Theater: The Shubert Theatre.
- Tony Awards: Nominated for 8, won 4, including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Original Score. Given how athletic the choreography by Sergio Trujillo is, it’s surprising he didn’t win (lost to Bill T. Jones for “Fela!”). The two leads were nominated but did not win and neither did Christopher Ashley for his direction. Ashley would go on to win in 2017 for “Come from Away.”.
- Fun Fact: David Bryan, the keyboard player for Bon Jovi, wrote the music and cowrote the lyrics for “Memphis” and won 2 Tony Awards – Best Score and Best Orchestrations.
- Fun Fact #2: The filmed version of the Broadway show was directed by Don Roy King who was the director of Saturday Night Live for 15 years from 2006 to 2021.
Podcast
It’s about music, it’s about race relations, but it’s NOT about how to be a good radio disc jockey. In giving a very loose account of the true-life music pioneer Dewey Phillips, the musical “Memphis” amps up the conflicts – which you would expect – in part by making the Phillips surrogate, Huey Calhoun, kind of an asshole. Still, the story of a white DJ breaking conventions of the 1950s by playing “race records” on white radio stations is very compelling, has great songs and downright electrifying choreography. So how did I not even know about this show?
I explore that question, and many much more interesting ones, in my conversation with true-life radio DJ and amazing human, Melissa Chase. While Huey Calhoun becomes a sensation in “Memphis” by breaking into the DJ booth at a radio station and locking everyone else out, Melissa became a star by being really good at her job. A lot of being a good radio DJ comes down to a person’s voice and I am a big fan of Melissa’s as it was a near-constant refrain during the mid-2000s in my life running kids to and from school. She has that wonderful quality of always having a smile in voice.
One of the best things related to this show is that a very high-quality filmed version of the Broadway show is available to stream. I highly recommend it for what is about as close to a live theater experience as you can get.