She was a girl from Boston with a voice from heaven, who shot through the stars from gospel choir to dance floor diva. But what the world didn't know was how Donna Summer risked it all to break through barriers, becoming the icon of an era and the inspiration for every music diva who followed.
Tony Award winner LaChanze (The Color Purple), Ariana DeBose (Hamilton, A Bronx Tale) and newcomer Storm Lever play Donna Summer, taking us through her tumultuous life, tempestuous loves and mega-watt musical hits. Spend the night in her electrifying universe.
Sadly, that's one of the few decent jokes in this tacky little show, a feebly dramatized Wikipedia page with lackluster covers, which was rushed to Broadway following a fall tryout at La Jolla Playhouse that received mostly tepid reviews. And yet it shows no sign of improvements having been attempted. Heaven knows it's not the way it should be.
To be clear, the clunking weirdness of this jukebox musical devoted to the 'queen of disco' has nothing to do with the three singers representing Summer at different stages of her life. Storm Lever as young 'Duckling Donna,' Ariana DeBose as 'Disco Donna,' and-most stage-commandingly -LaChanze as 'Diva Donna' do all they can to animate and give variously fierce or smooth fuel to the show's retinue of Summer's standards; the same goes for the hard-working, hard-dancing ensemble. (LaChanze particularly stands out. The poor dancers labor through some really odd choreography.)
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