Since it’s debut on Broadway in 2013, the musical After Midnight has been a popular revue across the country, with its latest production currently taking stage at the Fifth Avenue Theatre through this weekend. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen on stage before, and it’s well, well worth your time and attention. This is the second successive production at the Fifth Avenue that I’ve reviewed after the immensely fun Bye Bye Birdie, and both are unqualified successes.

Paying tribute to the Harlem Renaissance and the legendary jazz nightclub the Cotton Club, After Midnight is an 83 minute experience told through the songs of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and their contemporaries, as well as through the poetry of Langston Hughes. Meant, I believe, as a night in Harlem, it effectively employs music and poetry to tell its story. It’s mostly joyous, with a bit of darkness in there too. Much respect given to the creative team for making the theater give the aura of a nightclub vibe even though it wasn’t set in one.

I was already primed to enjoy the show because a few weeks before opening night, one of the stars, Yusef Seevers, sang the National Anthem before a Seattle Storm game and killed. I’m a season ticket holder so I’m at pretty much every home game and he stood out because their baritone voice was among the best I’ve heard in that context and I’ve heard most of them. He and Porscha Shaw were my favorite singers amongst the impressive cast, but the singing and dancing is excellent across the board. The talent selected was first rate, a mixture of performers with Broadway and national touring experience and locally grown stars.

The band is also top-notch. Led by bandleader William Knowles, the band itself is a great, stand-alone jazz band. It’s tight but also swings. This play ends this weekend and I hope this band continues to play regularly. I would love to hear it playing more jazz standards in a nightclub.

I say this not because I’m a lazy reviewer but I purposefully went into the theater without studying up and I think it was the correct approach. The play unfolds like an onion and reveals itself in layers going deeper in each song. It was an experience I won’t forget anytime soon.

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After Midnight runs at the Fifth Avenue Theatre through Sunday, August 24. Tickets and more info can be found here.

Photo Credit: Photo by Michael B. Maine. Courtesy of The 5th Avenue Theatre.