Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf Opens Off-Broadway

Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf, starring John Douglas Thompson, opens off-Broadway March 4. Directed by Gordon Edelstein, the one-man Louis Armstrong bio-play is playing at the Westside Theatre.

In March of 1971, one of the greatest music legends the world would ever know was performing the final set of shows he would ever play at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. But the audiences who adored him onstage never really saw the man behind the trumpet. In Satchmo at the Waldorf, we encounter Louis Armstrong where few ever had the chance to see him: backstage. Reflecting on his own unlikely career amidst a rapidly changing society, the icon is stripped bare, revealing complexities and contradictions that his omnipresent smile, horn and handkerchief belied.

Thompson morphs between playing Armstrong, his manager Joe Glaser, and fellow trumpeter Miles Davis.