Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations at the Overture Center: Soundtrack of a Generation
(Top): The Temptations: Derrick Baskin, Jelani Remy, Jawan M. Jackson, Ephraim Sykes and James Harkness Photo by Matthew Murphy. (Above): Michael Andreaus who plays Berry Gordy Jr., CEO of Motown Records
By Jonathan Gramling
The Motown Sound — coupled with Stax Records and other soul studios — was the soundtrack of the generation coming of age in the 1960s-1979s when the music filled the airwaves blasting out of the speakers of cars driven by teenagers tuned into AM radio. And its soul vibrations still reverberate throughout the world.
“Michael Jackson was the one that made me realize I could even sing,” said Michael Andreaus who portrays Berry Gordy Jr. in the play Ain’t Too Proud coming to the Overture Center on June 14-19. “I was walking around the house just singing ‘Bad’ or something. And my mom was like, ‘You really sound like him.’ I was little, so I said, ‘Okay.’ I didn’t think anything of it. But knowing at an early age that I could match pitch was something that maybe I would not have ever known. That just shows you the impact that Motown music had. Michael Jackson wasn’t with Motown when he made that. But he definitely came from there with the Jackson Five.”
Andreaus pursued a career in singing before backing up a little and getting a degree in musical theater and heading for New York where he got on dome Off-Broadway plays while supplementing his income as a nanny. Ain’t Too Proud is a play that he set his sights on.
“I had actually been involved with the auditioning for this show for a couple of years before I booked it,” Andreaus said. I was involved in auditioning for the Broadway production and then eventually the tour. Eventually I was able to find a good fit playing Berry Gordy. So not only being able to be in the musical featuring Motown music, but also to get to portray the guy that originated all of it and brought it to the world, I really couldn’t ask for anything more. It was a dream come true. And it’s been great ever since.”
Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records was a force to be reckoned with in the music industry and was a force in the professional and personal lives of the musicians that he signed on and managed at Motown. Gordy has been almost bigger than life and so Andreaus worked hard to authentically portray him within the confines of Broadway Theater.
“I think in everyone’s mind, he is this mythical figure,” Andreaus said. “He is larger than life. I think the challenge for me as an actor was to find some way that I could connect with him as a person. I didn’t have the chance to meet him in person. But just from the stories that I have heard from people who worked with him, I learned about him. I watched the documentary and talked to some people who knew him personally. I found ways that I could connect with him on a personal level. That was a real important to me because I wanted to make him as real a person as I possible could. I think we found a middle ground there. When you are on stage, you have to be somewhat presentational, but also find the reality in the character and the person.”
And in order to authentically portray Gordy eight times a week, Andreaus had to bring a little of himself into the character.
“Our production team, Des McAnuff our director and several assistant directors and Sergio Trujillo with our choreography allowed us to be ourselves,” Andreaus said. “They tweaked some things obviously. There are things that you have to portray when you are telling the story. But they allowed us to come to it from the aspect of being ourselves first, bringing as much of ourselves to the characters as we could because that is what is sustainable. If you go on stage and try to pretend to be someone else every single night, eventually it’s going to read false. So I think finding some part of ourselves to put into the character and being able to go from there was really a great approach and made it great to work with them.”
While Ain’t Too Proud is filled with music, it does have a story to tell.
“One thing that we like to stress is that this is not a concert,” Andreaus said. “It’s not getting up there singing song after song after song. It tells as much of the history that it can within a 2-3 hour show of The Temptations, how they found each other, how they rose up and how they lost members and gained members. There was a lot of hardship that people didn’t know about that went on behind the scenes. Just being a Black group coming up in the 1960s had its own set of challenges. A lot of times, all we hear is the music and we don’t really know the stories that happened with these groups. The book does a great job of tying all that together. There is one central narrator who is Otis Williams who is the last surviving member of the original Tempts. He is the one who wrote the novel that the book of the show was based off of. And so it is all coming from a very real perspective. It’s someone who was there for every step of it and is still touring today at 80-years-old. He’s known it from the beginning all the way through until now. You really can’t get a better source than that as far as the storytelling aspects are concerned.”
While The Temptation’s music has been a part of our lives for over 50 years, we have often just seen the public side of them.
“Even if you are a die-hard Temptations fan, I think you will come away with a greater understanding of them,” Andreaus said. “I considered myself a really, really big fan. I had done some Motown shows before. And even still, when I saw it for the first time, the thing that I thought was great was there are things that I had already known because I had seen The Temptations miniseries and things like that. Getting those things reaffirmed — ‘Oh that really did happen’ — there are a lot of those moments. But then there are moments where there are things that you didn’t know happened. I really came away from it just appreciating the group even more.”
And then there is the music, which is really at the heart of the show.
“I don’t want to give it away, but there is an even more interesting behind –the-scenes story related to ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ that we take kind of a humorous take on in regards to the song was a little bit personal for one of the singers in the group,” Andreaus said. “They thought the writer of the song was taking the opportunity to pick on him with the song. There is a lot of history in a lot of that music. One of the things that I love about this show is that way we use the songs to tell stories in a different way that you may not have heard before. There is a sequence that goes from ‘Losing You,’ which is one of my favorite Temptations songs, right into ‘I Wish It Would Rain.’ And even though both of those songs are about women who have been lost in their lives, we use the songs to kind of tackle other issues. I think it was just really genius the way that everything was put together.”
And we all know the music and sometimes audience members can’t help, but be their authentic selves.
“Oh yes, we hear audience members singing along with the songs,” Andreaus said. “One of the things that is great about this show is that there is a certain back-and-forth us and the audience. Our narrator directly addresses the audience throughout the show. There is some back-and-forth that is encouraged. We fully expect that people are going to know and love these songs to where it is almost impossible to not sing along with them. We hear that all the time and we love it because it just means that we are striking a cord with people and tapping into some memory that they’ve had with this great music. And at the end of the day, that’s why we do it.”
Ain’t Too Proud will take you back or teach you something about the history of Black music in America. It is something to experience.
