The great jazz trumpeter and sandpaper vocalist gets the old jukebox treatment in a new Broadway musical starring James Monroe Iglehart.

Well, hello, Louis! Add another talent to the already prodigious roster of Louis Armstrong: Jazz giant, trumpeter par excellence, great American vocal stylist and, now, the rare musical historical figure powerful and charismatic enough to drape a jukebox musical around and come out a victor.

James Monroe Iglehart stars as Satchmo in a new jukebox musical about the jazz great. But in this story, sometimes there’s too much to tell.

The biographical musical faces some of the same questions as the biography itself: what do you leave in, leave out, what is the central story you‘re telling, what are the essential truths and knots of a person and character you’re trying to tease out?

James Monroe Iglehart and a stellar ensemble are absolutely mesmerizing in a timely biographical musical about the life and music of Louis Armstrong.

The Louis Armstrong Musical” is a musically rich if wordy and info-heavy Broadway show that serves as a reminder of just how challenging the jukebox biographical genre can be,

What’s onstage at Studio 54 is largely a deflating and cobbled-together wife story that fails to capture Armstrong the artist.