The Wild Party Brings Jazz Age Decadence to New York City Center Stage

Bathtub gin, cocaine, and a jealous lovers' standoff: Joseph Moncure March put it all inside a scandalous 1928 narrative poem and called it *The Wild Party*. Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe set it to music in 2000. Twenty-six years later, director Lili-Anne Brown staged it at New York City Center with the raw, dangerous charge the material demands, closing a limited run tonight on West 55th Street that critics have largely greeted as a triumph.

The Encores! production, which opened March 18, centers on Queenie, a vaudeville dancer trapped in an abusive relationship with Burrs, a blackface minstrel comedian. The couple throws a prohibition-era house party in Harlem that draws an entire ecosystem of entertainers: fledgling Broadway producers, a lesbian stripper with a new date in tow, a grande fading diva. The evening spirals from gin-soaked revelry into something far darker.

Jasmine Amy Rogers, fresh off a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut in *Boop!*, plays Queenie and has drawn notices for a performance that makes explicit how far her range extends beyond that Betty Boop sweetness. Jordan Donica plays Burrs with what reviewers called "murderous edginess," while Tony winner Adrienne Warren brings beauty and cruelty to Kate, the frenemy who arrives on the arm of Black, played by Jelani Alladin. Tonya Pinkins, who appeared in the original 2000 Broadway production as Kate, returns in a role reversal to inhabit Dolores Montoya, the fading diva that Eartha Kitt originated.

LaChiusa's score contains more than three dozen musical numbers, and Brown structured the production without a traditional ensemble, relying instead on 15 full principal tracks running simultaneously. "There's no ensemble, there's 15 principals," Brown told BroadwayWorld before opening. "People don't leave the stage, it is a lot."

Guest Music Director Daryl Waters led the Encores! Orchestra through LaChiusa's jazz-drenched compositions, with choreography by Katie Spelman and costumes by Linda Cho, whose period-accurate garters and fishnets drew favorable notice from multiple critics. The design team also included scenic designer Arnel Sancianco and lighting designer Justin Townsend.

The show earned seven Tony Award nominations when it premiered, including Best Musical, with Toni Collette and Mandy Patinkin in the roles Rogers and Donica now own. That original production ran through Off-Broadway's Public Theater before transferring to Broadway in 2000. The Encores! revival arrives at a moment when multiple critics have observed a sharp cultural resonance: the Roaring Twenties excess and underlying dread of March's poem, transplanted into what one reviewer called "another '20s, likewise jittery, likewise unmoored."

The production played its final performance tonight, March 29.