Arena Stage presents Chez Joey, the world premiere “revisal” of the 1940 sleeper musical Pal Joey, with a score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and book by John O’Hara. This version leans into the sounds of jazz and the rhythms of mid-20th-century tap, while providing believable backstorie s to characters who otherwise wouldn’t ring true or feel comfortable today. Arena opened this season with a terrific revival of the hit machine Damn Yankees, and has done it again, with more depth and more resonance, by reconstructing Pal Joey, with its anti-hero lead — played in the past by Gene Kelly on Broadway and Frank Sinatra on film. Now, Myles Frost, who shot to fame on Broadway as Michael Jackson in the musical MJ, brings a new swagger to the role. This hard-hitting transformation reinvents an out-of-date storyline with a not-so-likeable lead into a deep meditation on race, class, and belonging in mid-20th-century America. Myles Frost (as Joey Evans) and the company of ‘Chez Joey ‘ at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Photo by Matthew Murphy. With a new book by Richard Lagravenese, the Hollywood screenwriter and director responsible for dozens of films including The Fisher King, Bridges of Madison County, Freedom Writers, and The Last Five Years, and direction shared by actor/director Tony Goldwyn and dancer/ choreographer/actor Savion Glover, Chez Joey casts its lens on the oft-unseen and ignored community of Black singers and dancers at the height of 1940s Hollywood and Hit Parade crooners. While Pal Joey’s titular character Joey Evans was a cad always on the lookout for a “mouse” ( a good-looking, shapely woman) for a frolic, he was a love-’em-and leave-’em type, always on the make for the next gig, next dame, next deal. Lagravenese has reinvented Joey and the rest of the principals, giving them more interesting backstories. While Chez Joey’s Joey has a roguish exterior, his past losses and failings have shaped him into a philosophizing master of song.  In fact, the sound of the voice and music, the interplay of words and silences, the rhythm and syncopation, the tone and color of the singer inhabit the very being of this character. From Pittsburgh, where he lost his mother, a club singer, as a child, then New York, he now finds himself in Chicago at Lucille’s, a down-at-the-heels nightclub with a jamming collection of musicians and an enticing group of chorus girls. One by one, the six-piece jazz ensemble enters, warms up, and raises the temperature and heart rates of anyone in hearing range. The chorus girls in practice clothes saunter in, stretch, and gossip, and finally, Joey slips in. His hair conked, his clothes dapper — he’s a striver, a smooth talker, quick thinking, and quick on his feet. Frost fills the role of Joey with both cocky confidence and an unquenched thirst for something more, something better, seemingly out of his reach. His foil and love interest, Linda English, has her own tough luck story, walking away from a marriage to come up North for a better, or at least different, life. Awa Sal Secka, who trained at Montgomery College and built her career at regional theaters including Arena, Signature, the Kennedy Center, Ford’s, and Theater J, stuns as both a song stylist in a statement-making riff on “My Funny Valentine,” and as a force for Joey to contend with, both musically and personally.  TOP LEFT: Awa Sal Secka (as Linda English) and Myles Frost (as Joey Evans); TOP RIGHT: Myles Frost and Samantha Massell (as Vera Simpson); ABOVE: Myles Frost and the company, in ‘Chez Joey‘ at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Photos by Matthew Murphy. Club owner Lucille (Angela Hall) makes her mark early with “There’s a Small Hotel.” In the second act, she seems to shed 20 years as she reminisces in “I Wish I Were in Love Again.” Samantha Massell gives the wealthy Vera Simpson a touch of feisty edginess when she’s introduced to Lucille’s as an antidote to her classical- and opera-loving society friends. Vera belies the uptight, frigid stereotypes that many wealthy decision-making women are given. Yet her attraction to the Black nightclub culture brings up its own problematic undercurrents of race, class, and financial mobility — all of which remain common tropes and realities. The ideal of Black excellence becomes central to Joey Evans’ ethos, seen in his tailored suits, straightened or conked hairdo, and his desire not merely to sing someone else’s words and music but to literally create each song as a living, breathing work of art, a unique testament to time, rhythm, expression, and the soulful moment itself. This core character trait makes him far more likable and respectable than the scheming cad Joey in Pal Joey. And co-director Tony Goldwyn, along with music supervisor Victor Gould and self-described orchestrologist Savion Glover, have resuscitated some Rodgers and Hart standards to astonishing results. You’ll never hear “Funny Valentine,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” the way they are rendered at Arena’s Kreeger stage — with gut-wrenching, soul-crushing abandon, inspired timing, and collaboration with the jazz ensemble. These and other solo endeavors become more than storytelling; they’re truth-telling. Getting at the embedded truths of these richly reframed characters stands at the crux of this remake. The fundamental shift is that the story now focuses on the realities of life as a Black man or Black woman in America. That truth gets revealed most elementally through Savion Glover’s embodied storytelling. Glover came of age in 1984 with The Tap Dance Kid, stunning a generation of musical theater lovers with his physical and syncopated pyrotechnics. Then in 1995, he wiped the grin off his face to choreograph and star in Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, the ensemble-driven history of living Black in America told through percussive dance forms. That legacy resonates in Chez Joey. While Joey seeks the sound, choreographer Glover digs into the beat, the embodied rhythms of African Americans. He traces the rhythms and syncopations, the postures and stances that remain at the core of most artistic and popular cultural output transferred to and re-mixed in the United States, from hoofing, to tap dance, to ragtime, swing, blues, rock ’n’ roll, hip hop.  Glover serves a role beyond choreographer as historiographer of the body in time, place, and space. Every stomp, brush, shuffle, dig, and riff recalls the trials and triumphs of Black Americans as complex syncopations of song and rhythm tell stories of love, longing, loss, and desire. References reach back to the 19th century’s William Henry Lane, known as Master Juba, in some of the poses Frost, clad in white tux, top hat, and cane, takes as Joey. There’s also a bit of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, most remembered as partner to child star Shirley Temple. The notable hoofers who break it down are Josh Johnson, Marcus John, Lamont Brown, Addi Loving, and Crystal Freeman.  There are rhythmic references to Black song-and-dance man John W. “Bubbles” Sublett — who taught Fred Astaire — in Glover’s choreography. Tappers can hear Eddie Brown’s distinctive “BS Chorus” rhythm with its “shave and a haircut” ending, along with a variety of time steps; classic 1940s moves like trenches — dancers leaning forward, kicking their legs behind them in quick succession; and sugars — swiveling on the balls of the feet emphasizing the hips. Homage to the famed Nicholas Brothers — Fayard and Harold — is paid with acrobatic leaps into jazz splits. More paired acrobatics heat up the stage in a number reflecting a swing dance reverie from 1941’s film Hellzapoppin’.  This is not Broadway “grin and shuffle” tap, and there’s no metal on the shoes. Glover, like all rhythm tappers, considers himself a musician first. The beat and syncopated variations tell this story of living as a Black person in America in an elemental way, alongside the dialogue and music. The excellent musicians, who skillfully riff in the call-and-response of jazz, include Lafayette Harris Jr., Corey Rawls, Daniel Bereket, Nolan Nwachukwu, Jalin Shiver, and Alex De Lazzari. The women dancers, some short and curvy, others long and leggy in their heeled LaDuca dance shoes, are Charis Michelle Gullage, Kalen Robinson, Ndaya Dream Hoskins, Alana Thomas, and Brooke Taylor. They’re the club’s nightly act, a few steps removed from burlesque. Their routines, save for a dance sequence leaning into African forms, strive for a studied, unified presentation. Derek McLane’s Act I set, with its simple bar and tables, with the musicians on stage and basic scalloped show curtain with the moniker Lucille’s, transforms into a ritzier setting in Act II. But in the intimate Kreeger Theater, space is at a premium, and elaborate settings would overshadow the show’s core focus on song and dance. Emilio Sosa’s costumes are richly colored and tailored for that 1940s style. The men sport bowlers — a nod to “Bojangles” Robinson and other tappers and sharp suits; the women wear dresses and heels or era-appropriate rehearsal attire. J. Jared Janas’s wigs replicate the processed styles favored by African American women and men up North.  Chez Joey, like many musicals, modulates between two worlds. With more than a dozen musical numbers — many pulled from other Rodgers and Hart shows — theatergoers who want a fun night at a song-and-dance show, with a love story and an up-from-poverty story, will find this suits the bill. For the hard-core jazz, music, and tap dance aficionados, though, Chez Joey is more than a revival of a classic show. The production takes a 1940s moment and re-frames it for our contemporary moment by shining light on stories told through sound and movement that reflect American society’s cultural divides while honoring Black excellence that made the 20th century the American century. Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission. Chez Joey plays through March 15, 2026, in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 Sixth St SW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($83–$133) are available online or through TodayTix.  Tickets may also be purchased through the Sales Office by phone at 202-488-3300, Tuesday through Sunday, 12-8 pm, or in person at 1101 Sixth Street SW, Washington, DC, Tuesday through Sunday, two hours before the show begins on performance days. Arena Stage’s many savings programs include “pay your age” tickets for those aged 35 and under; military, first responder, and educator discounts; student discounts; and “Southwest Nights” for those living and working in the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To learn more, visit arenastage.org/savings-programs. The program is online here.  Chez Joey Music by Richard RodgersLyrics by Lorenz HartNew Book by Richard LagraveneseInspired by John O’Hara’s novel, based on the ‘Pal Joey’ stories published in The New YorkerChoreography and Orchestrology by Savion GloverCo-Directed by Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover Buy Tickets Discount Tickets SEE ALSO:Arena announces powerhouse principal cast for ‘Chez Joey’ (news story, December 22, 2025)Tony winner Myles Frost to headline ‘Chez Joey’ at Arena Stage (news story, November 25, 2025) The post Terrific ‘Chez Joey’ at Arena Stage is more than a revival of a classic musical  appeared first on DC Theater Arts. ...read more read less