Shuffle Along

From Bert Williams, the first African-American to star on Broadway back in 1903, to Billy (Kinky Boots) Porter’s Best Actor Tony win 110 years later and Norm Lewis, who made history just last month by becoming Broadway’s first African-American Phantom, the journey of the black actor on the musical stage has been brought to vivid, entertaining, and often moving life by the fabulous Arthur L. Ross in his one-man Hollywood Fringe Festival 2014 show Shuffle Along. Starting the evening off with Wheeler’s “Nobody,” Ross continues the journey with “In Honeysuckle Time,” featured in the 1921 Broadway revue Shuffle Along (by pioneering writers Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake). Other African-American entertainers making appearances along the way i... full review