\ud83c\udfad NEW! Cabaret Theatre Newsletter<\/p>\n
On Friday January 9, 2026, New York Times columnist John McWhorter invited a lucky 70 or so people at the intimate Triad Theatre in the Upper West Side to explore his efforts to reconstruct Fats Waller\u2019s 1943 Early to Bed. The show was a success, running on Broadway in 1943 alongside the original production of\u00a0Oklahoma!, but much of its score and orchestrations were lost \u2013 and with it, an early contribution of Black Americans to musical theater history. McWhorter is a self-proclaimed obsessive, and it shows. Throughout the sold-out show, he told stories about the paths that his dedication to reviving this forgotten musical led him to \u2013 including ending up in strangers\u2019 basements searching through trunks for hints to what this musical might have looked like in its original production \u2013 in between performances of the songs by an all-female cast. Almost none of the male songs for the show survived, so McWhorter himself filled in on the few male roles when necessary.<\/p>\n
\ud83c\udfad NEW! Cabaret Theatre Newsletter<\/p>\n
The show was a treat for other musical theater obsessives to get a peek at a moment of musical theater history that, without McWhorter\u2019s efforts, might have stayed lost to history. There have been other efforts to reconstruct the work, but McWhorter uncovered even more pieces of Early to Bed, including a lyric with the melody lost which he composed a tune for in the style of Fats Waller, and a tune without a lyric that he wrote one for in the style of the show\u2019s lyricist, George Marion<\/a> Jr. McWhorter has a charming stage presence. He’s obviously a little uncomfortable singing in front of a crowd, but that made him all the more likable, and the audience was clearly packed with fans of his work. He led us through his reconstruction efforts and presented all of the songs he was able to (not the book, though, because according to McWhorter, it doesn\u2019t make much sense). He poked fun at how little the story and continuity tracked \u2013 even though it takes place in a brothel in Martinique, there\u2019s still a random number about \u201cHi-De-Ho-High in Harlem\u201d (a rousing number sung by Ivis Fundichely). The most well-known number from the show is \u201cThis Is So Nice,\u201d which was incorporated into the Broadway production of Ain\u2019t Misbehaving. The cast included Dirrane Cove, Katy Grenfell, Kristin Joseph and Diana Bertolini.<\/p>\n The surprising stand out singer of the show was McWhorter\u2019s 14-year-old daughter, Dahlia McWhorter, who boasts a powerful voice and relaxed stage presence. She was there to occasionally turn pages for McWhorter as he played. He originally planned to have her sing \u201cGet Away Young Man\u201d so she\u2019d have a little more to do, but he wryly said that when he gave her the song to try, he immediately realized there was no way he could have a 14-year-old girl stand on stage and sing it, so he gamely replaced her on that number. That number drew laughs from the crowd as they listened to the quite child-inappropriate lyrics. (He also said in his introduction to the number that he talked to one of the other singers before the show lamenting that if he sang it, everyone would think he was gay, and she pointed out that everyone already thinks that.) McWhorter instead had his daughter sing the framing number, \u201cThe Ladies Who Sing with the Band,\u201d a number he constructed to give the same feel of another framing number that was in the original Early to Bed, using other Fats Waller songs from different projects. His daughter\u2019s voice is really outstanding.<\/p>\n McWhorter put this production together in part because he\u2019s looking for a producer who might be willing to help fund recording a truly proper album of Early to Bed with full orchestrations and a full band, so that the public can once again hear the show in all its glory, as it was intended to be heard. If the three sold-out performances McWhorter has put on at the Triad so far are any indication, there is interest in hearing Early to Bed once more. The numbers are bouncy, fun, and original \u2013 here\u2019s hoping that someone is available to bring Waller\u2019s glorious score back to life on a larger scale. In the meantime, sign up for John McWhorter\u2019s newsletter<\/a> to find out if he puts the show on again. If he does, you\u2019ll want to grab your ticket as soon as you can.<\/p>\n Find more upcoming shows at the Triad on their website here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reader Reviews<\/p>\n To post a comment, you must register<\/a> and login<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83c\udfad NEW! Cabaret Theatre Newsletter Get all the top news & discounts for Cabaret & beyond. On Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-104236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}