Standout cast members do their best with pandering, stilted book about one of music’s greatest groups
Will audiences buying tickets to Ain’t Too Proud – about legendary Motown group, The Temptations – be expecting high-calibre storytelling? Perhaps not. These biographical, jukebox musicals often skirt on lacklustre writing but win audiences over by knocking the songs out of the park. The examples in recent years are myriad: Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, The Drifters Girl, Get Up Stand Up!
But, compared to the above, Ain’t Too Proud feels a tier weaker in how it immediately defaults to thudding exposition. Sifiso Mazibuko playing Otis Williams – the group’s only surviving founding member, and co-executive producer of the show – often breaks from song to walk centre stage and shuffle the narrative along.
Dominique Morisseau’s book operates as a sort of truncated Wikipedia page, covering off key milestones in the group’s trajectory, its various line-ups, and the deaths of its members. Corny banter often fills the empty space between songs and scene-changes. The wider Motown family also make an appearance, with unconvincing portrayals of Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, and Smokey Robinson. To Morisseau’s credit, there are genuine moments of darkness, depth and poignancy, including David Ruffin’s abusive relationship with Tammi Terrell and Williams estrangement from and eventual loss of his son – but these are fleeting.
Thank goodness for the principal cast. Following his wonderful turn in The Drifters Girl, Tosh Wanogho-Maud may be one of the most talented triple-threats around, oozing star power as the gritty-voiced David Ruffin and filling an otherwise sparse stage. Posi Morakinyo also flexes impressive vocal muscle as Dennis Edwards. The revelation of the production is Mitchell Zhangazha who channels Eddie Kendricks’ high tenor and falsetto vocals effortlessly. Meanwhile, Mazibuko struggles to make much of Williams, weighed down by flat, hagiographic writing.
Audiences keen to hear their favourite Temps’ songs delivered with aplomb will most likely leave the Prince Edward theatre happy. “My Girl”, “Get Ready”, and the title song all go down a treat. Yet I feel, for all the great work from the cast and the terrific band, the performances often fail to reach boiling point as songs are snipped, interrupted and poorly deployed.
Indeed, the challenges of working an existing score into a new book are apparent here. When not performed “concert” style directly to the audience, the songs are sometimes chosen for tenuous lyrical or emotional resonance, sometimes with eyebrow-raising results. For example, the news of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination triggers a performance of “I Wish It Would Rain”, despite the lyrics being squarely and unambiguously about a romantic relationship (“Sunshine, blue skies, please go away / My girl has found another, and gone away.”) There is a missed opportunity to better use the Temptations’ psychedelic, socially-engaged material to comment on the febrile political landscape of 1960s Detroit and the Civil Rights Movement.
There are other oddities in the score. Two dramatic moments are punctuated by songs which, though covered by the group, could hardly be considered Temptations’ staples: Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” and Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted.” We unfortunately don’t get to hear any of the solo material of Temptations’ members, despite much attention paid to their departures from the group.
At its core, Ain’t Too Proud is a vehicle to deliver audience nostalgia. The clearest demonstration of the uninspired writing is when Mazibuko as Williams has to explicitly tell the audience how iconic the Temptations are. It’s difficult to disagree with this conclusion; the problem is how we arrive at it.
