‘Five Guys Named Moe’: Heady Stew of Blues, R&B and Swagger

Director Robert O’Hara’s version of the Louis Jordan-based musical, “Five Guys Named Moe,” now at the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage is said to be very different from the original which proved to be popular on Broadway and on tour and in the West End in the 1990s and in revivals.

Sad to say, I didn’t see the original, and Jordan, the man and the music and precursor of rock and roll, was just a little before my time. So basically, what I saw was as brand new as a baby, more or less, although a pretty energetic and loud baby.

What O’Hara has done is to place the music—it’s a heady, stewy mixture of blues, R&B, a little bit of big band oomph—into the hands of what purports to be a contemporary (or at least 1980s style boy group), echoing with contemporary swagger and style, who pop out of a radio being listened to by one very sad sack guy who’s heading towards hangover at five in the morning, lost his girlfriend, and is generally moe-aning the blues.

The five Moes—No Moe, Big Moe, Little Moe, Four-Eyed Moe and Eat Moe—are dazzling in white smooth outfits and decide to help out the lost guy, by the name of Nomax by giving him free musical advice about life, women, drinking, women, dancing, women, attitude, and oh, yes, women. Count the audience as the sixth moe—More Moe.

The Moes are all terrific singers with a lot of range, and even more moves. They dazzle with attitude. Try, for instance, Little Moe with “Messy Bessy” and the classic “Saturday Night Fish Fry” and Sheldon Henry as Big Moe, hooking up with Kevin McAllister, as the befuddled Nomax on “What’s the Use of Getting Sober When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again.”

There’s a bit of contemporary flash and dazzle here—all achieved with the help a scintillating group six musicians to help glide things along. You might think Kanye or Jay-Z could come waltzing out to try their hand at some Jordan tunes. Yet, the songs have echoes—they have some of that bounce and rhythms of early rock, to be sure along the Bill Haley and Chuck Berry lines—but they dig back, too, with riffs and dollops of urban and southern blues and a little male Bessie Smith lamenting.

All the Moes can do their splits and spins, their cool moves—with sunglasses or not—they shine like a group of charmers who could talk and sing you into just about anything. They do just that when they persuade audience members—women all—to come up and do a conga line, in the calypso-raggae flavored first act closer “Push Ka Pi Shi Pie.”

The Moes— Jobari Parker-Namdar, as No Moe, Henry as Big Moe, Clinton Roane as Little Moe, Travis Porchia as Four-Eyed Moe, and Paris Nix as Eat Moe—are terrific entertainers and look great in white dinner jackets to boot. They embrace the music with their own sense of style, while leaving all the fun Jordan parts including the bluesy, often funny lyrics in.

And Nomax—as sung and performed by Kevin McAllister—does his part too. He’s got a deep and impressive bass voice that’s surprisingly evocative and affecting, and his stumble-bum act comes close to being endearing

What’s maybe missing from this—given that so much of the songs and material is about women of all shapes, sizes and dispositions—is an-in-the-flesh female performer. I’d say E. Faye Butler, who’s been at Arena enough to be comfortable, would be right at home with this bunch.

“Five Guys Named Moe” runs through Dec. 28.