Norm Lewis shapes a new Porgy for the ART (& Broadway)

Norm Lewis brings childhood memories and more to the role of Porgy in "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," the controversial re-imagining of George Gershwin's opera at the American Repertory Theater.

The drop dead handsome Lewis has a voice that floats on the air - tender, lyrical, seductive. That delicious baritone whisper in your ear is a constant (as are his gorgeous abs!); but the characterization of one of the stage's most memorably poignant figures comes on new in Diane Paulus' rethinking of "Porgy and Bess" that heads to New York's Richard Rodgers Theatre after it completes its run at the Loeb Drama Center.

First performed in September, 1935 at the Colonial Theater in Boston (with Boston bred and classically trained baritone Warren Colman as the tough stevedore Crown), "Porgy and Bess" with its nearly all black cast was originally conceived by Gershwin as an American folk opera. Despite a mixed reception and commercially unsuccessful run, its score was immediately recognized as a glorious hybrid that fused operatic technique and Broadway-styled numbers with blues and jazz from the African American culture.

Porgy’s journey

The opera came about after Gershwin saw "Porgy," a 1927 stage adaptation by the husband and wife team Dubose and Dorothy Heyward of Dubose Heyward's 1925 novel of the same name. Both novel and play tell the story of the crippled beggar Porgy and his relationship with Bess, the beautiful, but drug-addled woman who is torn between her relationship with the thuggish Crown and the kind Porgy. The play is set in a fictitious waterfront tenement in Charleston, South Carolina (based on the real-life Charleston neighborhood of Cabbage Row).

Gershwin's fascination with the piece led him to a seven year collaboration with the Heywards and with his brother Ira with hopes that their opera would premiere at the Metropolitan Opera. This didn't come to pass - instead the Theater Guild mounted the production, which opened on Broadway and ran for 124 performances - a decent run for an opera, but not long enough to earn back its investment, which led to it being considered a failure.

For decades "Porgy and Bess" was seen (to some success) in a truncated version, most famously in a 1952 production that starred Leontyne Price and William Warfield. It wasn't until 1976 did it come into its own with a Tony-winning staging by the Houston Grand Opera. The complete recording from that production won a Grammy award. In 1986 Gershwin's dream of his opera being performed at the Metropolitan Opera was finally realized.

Story continues on following page.

Watch this feature from the American Repertory Theater about "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess":

Connecting with the opera

But can a musical theater version co-exist with the opera? The Gershwin estate thinks so and sanctioned Paulus to supervise a new version. To do so Paulus gathered a pedigree team to rework the opera into something closer to a commercial musical: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who has reworked the libretto, and Diedre Murray as the musical adapter. Along with Lewis as the disabled beggar, the production features four-time Tony-winner Audra McDonald as Bess, David Alan Grier as the dope peddler Sportin' Life, Philip Boykin as the brutal Crown, Joshua Henry ("The Scottsboro Boys") as Jake, and Nikki Renee Daniels as his wife Clara.

EDGE spoke to Mr. Lewis on a recent warm morning in the outer lobby of the Loeb Drama Center just prior to a rehearsal.

He explains that although born in Tallahassee, he grew up as a son of Eatonville, Florida, so he easily identifies with the close-knit community life of Catfish Row.

His hometown, population 2,272, tiny as it is, is on the map as far as literature goes. Author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston (who was at the height of her writing career around the time "Porgy and Bess" came to Broadway) set her 1937 novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" there.

Lewis had heard of Hurston, of course, but admitted that growing up in the central Florida community he was even more aware of nearby Disney World. Lewis, 47, sang in church as a child but didn't discover musical theater until high school. At that time for $35 a week he played the lead Munchkin and the only flying monkey in a local production of "The Wiz" which featured future film star Wesley Snipes as the Scarecrow. "An amazing dancer," notes Lewis.

Still there were lessons from life in a small black township that ring true to Catfish Row.

"The Catfish Row residents are autonomous as well, and very drawn to the church as we were," he said. "It serves as the town hall if you will."

Lewis adds that "my grandfather was a preacher and I lived in the church all my life.

"That is where we went for meetings to do with politics of the city and injustices of the country.

"Politics, tragedies. We went to the church."

So it is familiar to Lewis, that when the hurricane strikes in "Porgy and Bess," that "we gather together there, calling out to God."

He adds that the devotional music that opens the scene, like the various sounds of the honey seller and other vendor's calls earlier in the story, "are all different sounds that become one. 'Thank you, Jesus, Thank you, Father' done in a singing kind of way but not a written down song."

Singing Sondheim

Lewis, who worked in the production and advertising departments at the Orlando Sentinel prior to a singing career. He was spotted by a producer singing in a club, who suggested he take a stint on a cruise line. This led him to move to New York where made his Broadway debut in "Miss Saigon" during its long run in the supporting role of John. Lewis turned heads in 1997 as Jake in the short-lived, but highly lauded "Side Show." For the next decade he worked steadily on Broadway in new shows ("L'Amour," Michael John LaChuisa's "The Wild Party") and long-running hits, such as "Chicago" (Billy Flynn) and "Les Miserables" (Javert). In 2005, he starred in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park revival of the rock musical "Two Gentlemen of Verona" in the lead as Valentine. He played the role of the slave Nathan in the Lincoln Center 2005 production of black author Sherley Anne Williams' musical "Dessa Rose," and in 2007 he originated the role of King Triton in the Broadway production of "The Little Mermaid."

He's had considerable success with singing Sondheim, playing Sweeney Todd in Fort Worth and at Washington DC's Signature Theatre. He went on to be featured in James Lapine's 2010 Broadway revue "Sondheim on Sondheim" with Vanessa L. Williams and Barbara Cook, where his rendition of "Being Alive" was one of the show's highlights.

In fact, his relationship with this iconic Sondheim number became personal over the years.

"In my 20s," said Lewis, "I saw it as a song to show off my voice."

The song took on more meaning for him when he was in his 30s - in a relationship, but unmarried and without children.

"By my 40s, I was alone and the song became even more real for me. Will someone love me?

"How brilliant he is," Lewis said of Sondheim."As with Gershwin, his are songs with great tunes, great lyrics, then you put it with what your life is about and they're very deep."

Ironically Sondheim joined the fray about the vision of this production when he wrote a withering letter to the New York Times criticizing Paulus' concept, which includes her decision (amongst others) to eliminate Porgy's goat cart. This effectively alters his poignant epiphany in the final scene: Just out of jail, Porgy returns to Catfish Row to learn that Bess, has run off to New York. Porgy calls for his cart, "bring my goat!," resolving to follow her. Immediately after he sings the final song of the show "Oh, Lawd, I'm on my way," he heads out of Catfish Row in search of Bess.

Sondheim did temper his criticism with kind words about the cast. "Certainly I can think of no better Porgy than Norm Lewis nor a better Bess than Audra McDonald, whose voice is one of the glories of the American theater. Perhaps Ms. Paulus and company will have earned their arrogance."

For me, upon meeting the handsome, 6'2" Lewis, the first question is why would Bess leave someone that looks like him for the sleazy con man Sportin' Life?

No doubt because of his good looks he was advised by some friends to put on a fat suit to play the role. "I'm not doing that," he says.

He will be using a cane. His take is that Porgy's "leg has atrophied, possibly from polio, he lists to one side, but I'm leaving the details (of the disability) up to the audience's imagination."

He sees the relationship between Crown and Bess as "shooting up" buddies... "abusive, misogynistic, but there's a companionship. They've needed each other for five years.

"Porgy understands his lot in life. His community calls him 'the cripple.' He understands he'll probably be alone in life.

"One thing I have is charm so I use it to beg. I go to the other side of the tracks for that," he said.

"In the beginning," he says of the relationship between him and Bess, "she needs someone. He's known her for years, but not gotten close to her." After Crown kills the winner of a craps game and flees, Bess, who is shunned by the women of Catfish Row, takes sanctuary with Porgy. "She hides out with me.

"I'm the lucky one who opens my door to her," says Lewis.

"I treat her like a lady, a respect she's never been shown. Slowly the relationship grows. My fantasy to become intimate with Bess, not just physically close but humanly close as well, comes true. I'm thrilled."

Will audiences accept this version of the relationship between Porgy and Bess?

"I hope so," Lewis says. "God I hope so."

"The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" runs August 17 through October 2, 2011 at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA. For performance times and more information visit the