In the early 1970s, Don Cornelius broke ground on national television with Soul Train. Yet as days turned into years, that same broken ground was unable to stabilize beneath him, the beauty of his calling ultimately unfolding into tragedy borne of his ambition.
In the long-awaited, monumental world premiere of Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical at American Conservatory Theater, the grandiloquent celebration of Black music and dance shoots fire through every nook and cranny of the theater. With its commitment to largesse, along with a mostly solid penning of Cornelius’ complicated legacy by Dominique Morisseau, the show’s future is laser-focused on Broadway, despite flaws that compromise the show’s organicity.
Chicago south sider and local television host Don Cornelius (Quentin Earl Darrington) is a golden-throated visionary, convincing his bosses at WCIU in Chicago to support a Black version of Dick Clark’s popular American Bandstand, a show with minimal interactions with Black artists. While those bosses ultimately approve the move, with the first episode premiering in 1970, none feel it necessary to own a piece of the pie, making Cornelius the overnight owner of a franchise that would last for 35 years and become the nation’s epicenter for Black culture and entertainment.
The ascendance of Cornelius ushers in problematic relationships with many in his orbit, including wife Delores (Angela Birchett), manager Pam Brown (Amber Iman) and son Tony (Sidney Dupont). As time goes on, wars are waged with the evolution of music itself as Cornelius rails against “fuckin’ disco” and “fuckin’ hip-hop,” turning the very name of the show, Soul Train, into an anachronism. Those battles expand to a mind and body that begins to fail him, leading to a self-inflicted death by gunshot in 2012.
The music — drawing on dozens of hits from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — is, of course, great, shaped by Kenny Seymour’s terrific arrangements. Director Kamilah Forbes has oodles of talent to work with, and the collection of dancers shaped by Camille A. Brown’s choreography that cooks with butane are the heartbeat of the show. The ubiquity of the Soul Train dance line and the evolution of popular movement that informed parties and dance halls around the world are given royal treatment here, assisted mightily by Dede Ayite’s multi-decade costume plot, Jason Sherwood’s gargantuan scenic design and the luminous lighting of Jen Schriever.
Many of Soul Train‘s highs and lows are prominently displayed in the narrative. While the early 1970s brought the forces of Soul Train and Motown into Los Angeles, where the hippest dancers and musicians splashed California sun all over their midwest artistic creations, booking talent was still difficult. Even Dick Clark recognized the evolving purchase power of Black viewers, starting his own ill-fated knockoff named Soul Unlimited, which, thanks to a Cornelius ally named Jesse Jackson, proved to be very limited.
