ARTS . Theater

Play It Again, Sam

Through Dec. 24,Delaware Theatre Company,200 Water St.


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Published: Dec 13, 2006

Theater artists learn early that the key to handling a disadvantage is to make it an advantage. Kevin Ramsey, writer and director of Sam Cooke: Forever Mr. Soul (premiering at the Delaware Theatre Company), was refused the rights to the groundbreaking singer's music (which was sold by his widow for a pittance), so he employs the deficiency as a key thematic point.

Cooke, who sought to break color barriers artistically and commercially, was mistreated in life and death. It's a poignant, powerful story ... but damn, we miss those songs! Hearing about "Another Saturday Night," "Chain Gang," "Cupid," "Twistin' the Night Away," "Having a Party" and "A Change Is Gonna Come" isn't the same as hearing the songs.

TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS: Temple grad Lawrence Stallings captures Cooke's distinctive velvety tones with conviction.

: carol H. feeley

It's a shame, too, because Temple University grad Lawrence Stallings makes a magical Cooke. He's tall, handsome and earnest, but most importantly captures Cooke's distinctive velvety tones with conviction. Stallings' performance is more than a tribute or an impression; he presents a genuine soul, whose talent and tragedies make us want to read Peter Guralnick's biography Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke (Ramsey's inspiration) and listen to Cooke's recordings (thankfully still in print, though his progeny earn nothing from them).

Ramsey has fun with the one-person bio-revue's requisite challenges, showing a post-death Cooke conversing with his radio (a plethora of voices crafted by radio pro C.S. Treadway) — a silly device, but it propels us into the story — and lots of great music. Too bad it's mostly covers: "Mona Lisa" (Johnny Mathis), "It's All Right" (Curtis Mayfield), "Stand By Me" (B.B. King) and "Try a Little Tenderness" (Otis Redding), plus a lot of gospel, which Cooke sang for six years leading The Soul Stirrers before breaking into pop in 1957 with "You Send Me" (no, we don't hear that one).

Ramsey even indulges in some hokey audience participation, inviting a sing-along on "Higher and Higher" and a dance-along for "Land of 1,000 Dances." Stallings plays along exuberantly, with great accompaniment by music director Alva Nelson and percussionist Harvey Price.

Stallings convinces us that Cooke could have been as big as Sinatra, Sammy Davis or even Elvis, had he not died in a 1964 suspicious "justifiable homicide" at age 33. He struggles, though, when Ramsey abruptly shifts gears to force Cooke to recite some unwieldy — though pertinent — civil rights speeches. The effort to make Cooke real evaporates in stilted prose.

Even without the hits, Stallings and Ramsey show us that Sam Cooke could "turn out a room" and deserved better than he got, in life and after.

(m_cofta@citypaper.net)

Sam Cooke: Forever Mr. Soul

Through Dec. 24,Delaware Theatre Company,200 Water St., Wilmington, Del.,302-594-1100,www.delawaretheatre.org