Playwright: Rueben Echoles. At: Black Ensemble Theater at the Beacon Street Hull House Center, 4520 N. Beacon. Phone: 773-769-4451; $40-$45. Runs through: May 16
"Flashdancing" is a dance style designed to highlight the versatility of its performers, incorporating a blend of classical and popular steps, along with such showy kinetics as gymnastics and marching drills. But we wouldn't have the movie bearing that name, nor Michael Jackson's electroshock-hoofing, Jackie Wilson's frenzied acrobatics, or today's collegiate "stepping" squads if not for Fayard and Harold Nicholas, the men who showed them all how to do it, immortalized in the 1943 film Stormy Weather, where they executed serial jumps and splits in leapfrog formation down a flight of massive stairs in a dazzling display of terpsichorean agility unmatched to this day.
Black Ensemble's latest biodrama includes an abbreviated version of that breathtaking sequence ( properly called "Jumpin' Jive," after the Harold Arlen-Cab Calloway song precipitating it ) , as well as the "Shake Your Body Down to the Ground" segment from the mid-1970s television show The Jacksons, featuring the then-sixtysomething Nicholas duo appearing with Michael and Janet Jackson. The musical roster also encompasses a cavalcade of jazz classics"It Don't Mean A Thing," "My Kind of Town" and the obligatory "I Got Rhythm"along with a rarely heard funeral-tempo "I'll Fly Away."
Rueben Echoles' play is subtitled "The Story of the Nicholas Brothers," however, making for less emphasis on spectacle, instead exploring the unswerving loyalty practiced by the siblings and their family members over nearly a century of slow progress for African-American artists. Whatever setbacks their careers may have suffered over its 80-year spandeath, divorce, disability, discrimination ( the last forcing them into European exile for a time ) their fraternal bond never wavers in its mutual resolve and respect, thus demonstrating that fame need not always lead to folly and corruption.
Author-choreographer Echoles himself plays the impulsive younger brother Harold Nicholas, flanked by Rashawn Thompson's prudent elder brother Fayard. Donald Barnes and Dawn Bless lend a dignified presence to the Nicholas parents, as do Melanie McCullough and Kylah Williams, playing the respective Mesdames Nicholas ( Mrs. Harold, a.k.a. Dorothy Dandridge, enjoying stardom in her own right ) . Add a protean chorus brimming over with enthusiastic glee ( props to Daryl Brooks' spot-on Cab Calloway impression ) and a band armed with a brass section hot enough to sizzle and what you get is invigorating entertainment to dispel any trace of lingering early-spring gloom.