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Musical revives Manhattan Casino's heyday
By JON WILSON
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- The storied Manhattan Casino, a cultural touchstone and symbol of an era, is headed for the stage. Bob Devin Jones, an accomplished dramatist with an extensive background in black-themed plays, is writing the story line for the 22nd Street S music hall, which for years was an African-American social center on the community's main thoroughfare. Jones teams with Bill Leavengood, another widely known playwright who last year brought a piece of St. Petersburg history to the stage when Webb's City: The Musical drew enthusiastic crowds and bright reviews. Old-timers recall such greats as Ray Charles, Count Basie and Duke Ellington appearing at the Manhattan -- and its stage story will be produced as a musical. A composer/lyricist will be brought aboard later, Jones said. He imagines the music as "a combination of gospel, spiritual and jazz influence done in the idiom of musical theater." Most of the songs will be done inside in a cabaret setting, Jones said. The story's main character is a black woman tentatively named Althea Dunbar; her foil is young, white promoter Prather Smith, who loves both jazz and Althea. A November 2002 opening at the Palladium Theater is anticipated. The LiveArts Peninsula Foundation, originally formed to keep Webb's City playing, is producing the Manhattan musical. Webb's City, meanwhile, returns Nov. 15-24 at the Mahaffey Theater. Tickets are $15 and $20. (Call 892-5767.) That work tells the story of James E. "Doc" Webb, an imaginative entrepreneur who built what he called "the world's most unusual drugstore" downtown. Leavengood and composer Lee Ahlin also managed to define a piece of St. Petersburg's culture, which is a reason the play has been so popular locally. The Manhattan work aims to show another aspect of the city's history and culture as circumscribed by segregation. Set in the 1940s and '50s, part of the Manhattan's heyday period, it will reflect a St. Petersburg white people rarely experienced. "If you don't explain to your children what it was like, you're not giving them a true picture of life," Jones said. The Manhattan Casino stands empty today on 22nd Street's 600 block. City government has designated it historic and may buy it from the current owner, John Miller. Also an actor and director, Jones has made a mark in town with works such as Uncle Bends, A Home-Cooked Negro Narrative, which tells the stories of everyday black people while containing social irony. The Manhattan work will do some of the same thing, Jones said, in terms of portraying lives similar to those of people who lived and worked on the casino's street. "I don't want to call them unsung heroes," Jones said. "They were sung up and down 22nd Street." The musical also will explore themes of segregation, social division and isolation. Jones envisions one of the songs -- tentatively titled Lester's Belt -- as portraying an infamous lynching here. Jones and Leavengood are working closely together, although Jones is the writer. Both are researching background for the musical, searching out newspaper files and interviewing people who remember the old Manhattan. "The interviews are just astonishing," Leavengood said. "So specific, so rich. . . . Their lives are about hard work and family." The interviews are continuing. Anyone with direct knowledge of the Manhattan or 22nd Street S during their liveliest periods can call 565-0196, the playwrights suggest.
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