![]() “You’re spreading the legend of this woman and telling the stories as opposed to acting out the stories, in some way bringing it to the most basic human interaction, and it’s cool.”Īlso inviting, and vital for the area’s theater ecosystem: The production underscores the ongoing but optimistically deepening commitment on the Denver Center’s part to support accomplished area artists. “It’s like telling stories around the campfire, right?” he said. It was an inventive solution, one that Nehls loves. More the way a fine storyteller might evoke a character to make her yarn that much more captivating. “I said, ‘If I can just put it into the way that I talk and just make it that we are honoring her and paying tribute to her instead of being her.” So, McCallum tells Ruth’s story – occasionally slipping into Ruth’s shoes - but not the way a mimic would. I don’t know if I want to do that - or can do that.” (She could have but that’s beside the point.) ![]() “And I said, you know what? I do not want to play her. “He actually handed me a script with someone playing Ruth Brown,” recalled McCallum on a video chat at the end of a rehearsal day. Nehls had originally envisioned that more conventionally told tale. “Miss Rhythm” could easily have been one of those jukebox revues that strings the facts of an artist’s biography with hit after hit. David Nehls, co-writer, with Sheryl McCallum, of “Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown.” Jeremy Rills, provided by Denver Center for the Performing Arts ![]() Her last was in 2006 in Las Vegas, where she died. As Nehls can attest, Brown continued to do shows into the oughts. Bonnie Raitt, who worked with Brown on her Rhythm and Blues Foundation efforts to recoup royalties for artists, did the honors. In 1993, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1988, she played the affable, segregation-challenging deejay Motormouth Mable in John Waters’ film “Hairspray.” The following year, she received the Tony for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her role in “Black and Blue,” a revue set in Paris between the world wars. There were the Atlantic years and then a fallow period. Though there were many valleys, Brown scaled notable peaks in her seven decades of making music, from 1949 to 2006. Theater reviews: One play has no shortage of antics, another no paucity of ambition In her first Denver show, McCallum played a town elder in the Curious Theatre Company’s production of “Marcus Or the Secret of Sweet,” part of MacArthur Fellow Terrell Alvin McCraney’s trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays. In New York, she was in the Broadway cast of “The Lion King” as well as a performer in City Center’s Encores! concert series. Since returning from New York City to take care of her mother, Denver native McCallum has been making inroads in the area’s theater scene. McCallum and Nehls first met in New York in the 1990s, reconnected in Denver a few years ago doing musical theater, and seized the opportunity that the COVID pandemic afforded them (in that “lemons, meet lemonade” way) to create the show. 15.Ĭonnection is also a recurring theme in how McCallum and Nehls came to make “Miss Rhythm,” which is based on the 1996 book “Miss Rhythm: The Autobiography of Ruth Brown, Rhythm and Blues Legend” by Brown and Andrew Yule. That sense of connection has become the true north of the new show “Miss Rhythm - The Legend of Ruth Brown.” Written by Nehls and actor and star Sheryl McCallum, the homegrown, home-honed show opened to previews this past weekend at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Garner Galleria Theatre. The lesson Nehls tucked away from that encounter? Brown, who died in 2006, knew how to connect with her fans, with her audiences. You don’t have to.’ She said, ‘You get over here and you take a picture with me right now.’” “He pulled me across the street, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’’ The friend asked Brown if she would take a picture with the abashed Nehls. Ruth Brown sings during the “Salute to the Blues” concert at Radio City Music Hall, in this Feb. “My friend was like, ‘Come on,” recalled Nehls, on a recent phone call. ![]() The noted local pianist and musical director was living in New York and he and a friend were having drinks across from the storied Blue Note club when they spotted the singer waiting for her car. Still, it might have been the most indelible. It wasn’t the first time - or the last - that David Nehls would see the legendary R&B singer Ruth Brown. Saturday, May 20th 2023 Home Page Close Menu
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