Arts & Entertainment

Journey to stardom

New MetroStage production follows a young Baker to early fame

Published

14 years ago

February 16, 2012

‘Josephine Tonight’
Through March 18
MetroStage
1201 North Royal Street
Alexandria
$45-$50, $25 students
703-548-9044

From left: James Alexander, James T. Lane, Zurin Villanueva, Aisha de Haas and Debra Walton in ‘Josephine Tonight.’ (Photo by C. Stanley Photography; courtesy MetroStage)

Before she was Josephine Baker, the toast of Jazz Age Paris wowing audiences at the Follies Bergère, she was Josie McDonald, a skinny kid doing the chicken dance for spare change in front of the Piggly Wiggly back in St. Louis. It’s this metamorphosis from girl to ravishing young star that’s portrayed in the musical “Josephine Tonight,” currently premiering at MetroStage.

Broadway vets Sherman Yellen (book and lyrics) and the late Wally Harper (music) frame Baker’s bio as a Cinderella story. (Lyrics mention the would-be princess and her pink silk ball gowns more than once.) And though young Josephine derives support from her no-nonsense washerwoman mother, besotted young husband, and assorted showbiz folks, there is definitely no fairy godmother in this tale. As presented here, the magic that transforms our heroine from Josie to Josephine comes from within. She’s her own creation.

It’s tough to cast the role of a legendary figure like Baker, whom most people know as the almost naked dancer portrayed in the iconic posters from “Le Revue Nègre” (the 1925 Parisian show that shot her to stardom). Happily, Zurin Villanueva portrays the young Baker with a natural confidence and effervescent energy that feels just right. She looks the part too: Tall and lithe with an expressive beauty.

Villanueva’s Josephine subtly matures during the show (aging from 14 to early 20s). Along with Josephine, we learn that she’s too big for segregated Post World War I America. We watch approvingly as she nonchalantly trades her increasingly boring husband for a French lover and alludes to her sexual experiences with women. It’s a juicy part and Villanueva has fun with it.

The four remaining top-notch cast members definitely earn their paychecks playing multiple roles (mostly key figures in Josephine’s early life to which the show is fairly faithful). Talented triple threat James T. Lane is terrific as Josephine’s husband Eddie Baker and as her French lover Paul. James Alexander and Debra Walton are delightfully versatile as corny vaudevillians, racist whites and other parts.

At a recent matinee, Roz White stepped in for an absent Aisha De Haas as Josephine’s wry mother Carrie and her boozy, blues-singing mentor Big Bertha Smith — both great roles. White’s take on “Bertha’s Blues,” a song that segues from blues to gospel was among the show’s highlights. With arrangements and orchestrations by musical director David Alan Bun, the lively score is packed (probably too much) with ragtime, blues and Broadway-style tunes.

“Josephine Tonight” is directed and choreographed by Maurice Hines (openly gay) who first gained fame long ago tap dancing with his late brother Gregory. He successfully mines the backstory for humor and keeps things moving at a brisk pace. His choreography — including Baker’s famous jungle dance — harks back to the era. Reggie Ray’s costumes are wonderfully evocative of the time as well, but one can’t help but wonder what he might have done with a bigger budget. Scenery/projection designer Klyph Stanford supplies a discreet art deco proscenium arch. Underneath hangs a translucent scrim on which he projects images pertinent to Baker’s life: a laundry line, the Cotton Club sign, the Eiffel Tower. Behind the scrim, the hot five-piece band can be seen playing.

The show ends just when Josephine achieves celebrity. We see her dance in the iconic skimpy banana skirt and walk the stage as a sequined and plumed main attraction. Baker went on to scale more performance peaks, work undercover for the French Resistance during World War II, and assemble a rainbow family of adopted children. And though she returned to the U.S. for work until her death in 1975, she was a citizen of France and made her home there. But those are details for another musical.

Related Topics:Aisha de Haas Josephine Baker Josephine Tonight MetroStage Out & About

Up Next

Message in the music

Don't Miss

Calendar: Feb. 17

FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM

Books

New book reveals what we can learn from animal sex

‘Poking the Squid’ on homosexuality, gender swapping, and more

Published

5 hours ago

July 13, 2026

Terri Schlichenmeyer

(Book cover image courtesy W.W. Norton)

‘Poking the Squid: What We Can Learn from Animal Sex’
By Perrin Roosevelt Ireland
c.2026, W.W. Norton
$29.99 241 pages

Birds do it.

According to Cole Porter, bees do, too, but it’s not exactly what he imagined. Wild and tame, avians, insects, and mammals all have sex – although not always as you’ve been told or for reasons you might think. Even educated fleas do it and, as in the new book, “Poking the Squid” by Perrin Roosevelt Ireland, humans can learn from them all.

If you read through scientific papers on animal reproduction, you might notice something unusual: for scientists, the word “sex” means a lot of different things.

Says Ireland, “It’s used to describe behaviors, biology, life histories, and more.”

That might be because animals are not simply binary.

Take, for instance, hyenas. It’s easy for the casual observer to mistake a male hyena for a female and vice versa because of stereotypes of anatomy. Mating, for hyenas, requires subordination for the male and a nifty trick on the part of the female’s body to get things done.

Our feathered friends are no birdbrains, either: black-browed albatrosses were once thought to be monogamous but global warming seems to have changed their nesting habits sometimes. Male flamingos have sex with one another, as a territorial thing; other birds and animals form same-sex pairs for other reasons.

The Chinese mantis eats her mate after fertilization. Female snakes, alpacas, guinea pigs, and monkeys are anatomically able to enjoy sex. Genitalia between species varies quite a bit; in fact, the vaginas of ducks “are highly complex.” Lionesses will mate up to 100 times when in heat. Female damselflies will change into a “third sex” to avoid overly aggressive mating males. Bearded dragons can change their sex, if needed, as can yellow clown goby fish. And seahorse pregnancy and birth sparked a book banning in Tennessee.

So, asks Ireland, if animals, including us, vary so much in biology and life, “… why are we using the word sex like it means something, anything, consistent?!”

Pick up “Poking the Squid,” page through it a few seconds, and you’ll see that the information here is largely told through cartoon-like drawings mixed with captions. It seems to be something on the lighter side, but don’t let that artwork fool you.

Author Perrin Roosevelt Ireland offers readers solid information that cozies up to the scholarly, with hard science, philosophy, feminism, and quotations from researchers to support it, thus furthering the narrative and hitting the points squarely. If you see the art and expect something lighthearted, comic, and small-talk-worthy, you could be disappointed.

On the other hand, if you want solid, wryly serious facts, you’re in for a treat.

There’s lots of learning to be gleaned here, and some slight nudge-wink whimsy to emphasize the absurdity of wrong-headed thinking. This can make readers feel like they’re in-the-know on the jokes, and the playfulness balances the seriousness of the information well.

So, serious, scholarly, or slightly silly, none of these are negative but you’re going to know what you want from a book like this. For the right reader, someone in the mood, “Poking the Squid” is wild.

The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.