Review: Unforgettable – the Nat King Cole Story, Bridge House Theatre

Unforgettable follows the life of legendary singer and jazz musician Nat King Cole (played by Kwame Bentil) with his second wife Maria (Alicia Charles), dealing with seething racial tensions in America at the time that his career peaks. His story is a fascinating one; the son of a Baptist minister rising, due to his extraordinary musical talent and beautiful voice, to become one of the best known entertainers in the country.

Playwright Tim Connery makes the singer’s role in the civil rights movement central to his story, although it is clear that Cole is reluctant to get involved, preferring instead to get “lost in my music”. Maria is the voice of his conscience when it comes to race issues, and we see her trying and eventually succeeding in making him take a stand. Much of the tension comes from descriptions of instances of shocking racism displayed against the couple. There’s a powerful moment when Cole describes returning to his home town to perform and being rushed on stage by white supremacists who plan to kidnap and probably kill him.

The other central tenet of the play is Cole’s relationship with Maria. She is portrayed as better educated than him, a talented singer, an adoring fan, part manager, and at times part nurse. There are points of crisis in their relationship, money worries, illness, an affair, but also tenderness. 

The staging of the play is sparse – a piano, a chair, a dressing gown. And the lighting (Luke Adamson) is unobtrusive, with one moment of brilliance when a burning cross is illuminated across the faces of the actors. Scenes are snapshots of key moments in the characters’ lives through many years – marked by the display on the back wall of rather homogenous slides saying things like “New York 1946”. I sometimes got lost as to the exact place or time in the story, and sharpening up the identity of the slides or using variation in lighting might help clarify this. 

And this perhaps is the problem with the play itself: it lacks flow. It feels like moment after moment pieced together – flip-flopping between the couple’s relationship and civil rights issues – rather than a seamless whole leading to a crescendo. And the one biggest problem for this play about a talented singer is the clear lack of singing. When Bentil actually sang you could see the audience sit up and engage on a totally different level. I felt short changed when he delivered Unforgettable at the end – realising how different a play it could have been if it had leaned more on his beautiful voice. Perhaps there were rights issues, but it felt like a big miss.

On opening night, it felt the couple were yet to fully commit to each other on stage. There was a little hesitancy in the romance, which should very much be the beating heart of the story. Charles as Maria is the more convincing of the two, with Bentil’s Cole feeling a little distant at times, although when they sang together this was all forgotten. And this hesitancy or distance rather robbed the final scene of its potency and poignancy. The audience should have been in tears, but instead we sat there watching the drying tears on the actor’s cheek.

This is nevertheless an ambitious production with some excellent points of drama and acting. It tells a story about action and inaction in the face of hate and violence which feels very relevant in today’s society. It is an entertaining watch, and offers a lesson on the importance of taking a stand even when it feels easier not to. 

Written by Tim Connery
Lighting, Sound and Video by Luke Adamson
Director Nathan Osgood
Produced by Stage d’Or

Unforgettable runs at the Bridge House Theatre until Saturday 4 July.