“CrazySexyCool” seems like a no-brainer title for the new biomusical about the ’90s R&B girl group TLC. The release of that 1994 diamond-certified album is a pivotal moment in the production, now at Arena Stage. The show’s sound is defined by that record’s barrage of bangers — “Creep,” “Waterfalls” and more. What is the trio’s tale if not crazy, sexy and cool?
Yet Kwame Kwei-Armah, the musical’s writer and director, refers to the show by another moniker in his mind: “What About Your Friends.” That 1992 TLC track opens the musical, after all. And its questions of camaraderie — “What about your friends? Will they stand their ground? Will they let you down again?” — pulsate throughout the high-octane spectacle.
“That’s the theme,” Kwei-Armah says. “That’s what rides all the way through the piece: friendship, sisterhood, love.”
That’s not to say that “CrazySexyCool” shies away from TLC’s chart-topping hits, kinetic choreography and tabloid-worthy scandals. But it was the complicated connection among Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes that Kwei-Armah found most compelling.
Each woman is wrestling with demons in the fact-based musical, which starts performances Friday in Washington. Watkins struggled with sickle cell anemia from a young age. Thomas confronted the juxtaposition of faith and pop stardom. Lopes dealt with alcoholism and a tumultuous personal life, then died in a car crash at age 30. TLC’s efforts to destigmatize sexual health and raise HIV awareness also loom large in the show, which delves into both the group’s combustible clashes and its enduring influence.
“We want to humanize this group, because icons are not naturally humanized — they’re just this idea or a moment in time for the mass public,” says Jade Milan, who plays Lopes. “We’re going after the heart of the thing.”
When longtime TLC manager Bill Diggins and producer Stephen Gabriel approached Kwei-Armah with the idea for a TLC jukebox musical several years back, the British theater-maker — then the artistic director of London’s esteemed Young Vic — agreed to co-produce but resisted an offer to write the show. Eventually, though, Kwei-Armah found himself absorbed in the tragedy of Lopes’s death and agreed to spin the TLC saga for the stage.
“I went, ‘Oh, this is a survivor story,’” he says. “When someone in your band dies at such an early age, what do you do with the rest of your life? How do you navigate being introduced to the world as a threesome and then going down to two?”
Kwei-Armah started by devouring TLC’s albums for several weeks. At one point, he printed the lyrics, spread them around his study and scoured the catalogue in search of dramatic oomph. “Before I do [the] story,” Kwei-Armah says, “I have to stare down the lyrics of a song and then go, ‘Where’s the drama in that song? Where can that sit technically within a musical?’”
Eventually, the self-described TLC superfan pieced together a plot and assembled a song list. After opening with a flash-forward to Watkins and Thomas learning of Lopes’s 2002 death, “CrazySexyCool” rewinds to the grueling auditions that brought Thomas in as a replacement for founding TLC member Crystal Jones.
Finding this production’s stars was a similarly exhaustive process that included several auditions for each actor and taxing dance sessions with choreographer Chloe O. Davis.
When Holli’ Gabrielle Conway got wind of a TLC musical, she called her agent with uncanny confidence. “Give me an audition for this show, and I’m telling you: I will book it,” she recalls saying. “T-Boz is my role.”
The daughter of Hollis Conway, a two-time Olympic medalist high jumper, Conway wore her father’s training pants to the audition for good luck. Not that she needed it: Although Conway has since established herself as more of a belter on Broadway, in “Six” and “Tina,” her deeper natural register was tailor-made for T-Boz’s range.
“I really used to sing very, very low, and I thought it was a hindrance,” Conway says. “There were only a couple of artists who sang songs that I really felt comfortable singing, and T-Boz was one of them.”
Stoney B. Woods, a veteran of “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway, was taking a break from the business after getting married when the audition notice for Chilli came her way. Woods, a Bronx native whose mother and brothers all rap, couldn’t resist the allure of a musical rooted in hip-hop. As a bullied teen who found solace in “Unpretty,” TLC’s self-love anthem, Woods long revered the trailblazing trio.
“‘Unpretty’ was the first time I was thinking about how I viewed myself,” Woods says, “and how I need to view myself better and to acknowledge and value the things about myself.”
Milan also connected with TLC through her mother, a die-hard who played “No Scrubs” and the like on repeat. After portraying an Alicia Keys analog in the Broadway musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” Milan learned to emphasize essence over imitation when evoking a real person. This time around, she studied the 2007 documentary “The Last Days of Left Eye” in an attempt to tap into the humanity of a woman largely remembered for burning down her boyfriend’s house and spending time in rehab.
“Left Eye is headlines,” Milan says. “She’s easy to find, but that’s not what I was looking for. I was looking for her. I was looking for Lisa.”
Pinpointing the right leads, however, wouldn’t count for much if their chemistry didn’t crackle. But sit down with the actors and their bantering rapport promptly becomes apparent. (“You’ve got to pull us in,” Conway warns at one point, after several quips and cackles take the interview amusingly off topic.) When the cast ran through the first act during a rehearsal last month, Conway, Milan and Woods marked intermission by gleefully enveloping each other in a tight embrace.
“What Kwame has done is told this beautiful story of sisterhood,” Woods says. “Now, we get to step in the room and actually bring an authentic sisterhood that we’ve gotten to build together.”
It helps that Kwei-Armah and the cast can lean on the group’s surviving members. “[The production] can just get Tionne and Chilli on the phone if we have any questions,” Conway says. “So that’s been really nice.” When Kwei-Armah met with Thomas in Miami and recited the script, she promptly wept and hugged him — then offered pertinent feedback.
“She said, ‘So here’s the thing that didn’t happen. Here’s the thing that didn’t happen. Here’s the thing that did happen that you haven’t included,’” Kwei-Armah says. “That’s been the process with both of the women.”
Although TLC’s hits give the show most of its soundtrack, some of their contemporaries appear as characters. One example: MC Hammer, who pops up to rattle off a rendition of “U Can’t Touch This” as a speedy change of pace from TLC’s midtempo earworms.
It’s another crowd-pleasing flourish for a production that hasn’t been shy about its Broadway aspirations. Yet Kwei-Armah hasn’t had time to look that far ahead. After that first act rehearsal last month went off without a hitch, he warned his cast that the second would include a slew of changes he had made during a late-night writing session the prior evening.
“Of course, everybody wants their show to go to Broadway and the West End,” he says. “We want all of those things, but I never go into a gig going that’s its destination. We’re at that wonderful point in the process where anything and everything is possible. Soon it will be in front of an audience, and an audience will tell us what’s next.”
CrazySexyCool — The TLC Musical Friday through Aug. 9 at Arena Stage, Washington. arenastage.org.
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