An all-new incarnation of the record-breaking Broadway hit returns to NYC!
Smokey Joe’s Cafe: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller, the Grammy® Award-winning and Tony Award®-nominated smash, made history as Broadway’s longest-running musical revue. Featuring 36 of the greatest songs of the past century, including showstopping classics like “On Broadway,” “Stand by Me,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Hound Dog,” “Love Potion No. 9,” “Spanish Harlem,” “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown,” it celebrates the music of the legendary songwriting duo, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Their generation-defining songs provided hit after hit for icons like Elvis Presley, Ben E. King, The Coasters, and The Drifters.

Featuring a wide-ranging catalog that celebrates the humor, passion, and heartbreak of everyday life, this classic show now returns to NYC to thrill a new generation of theatergoers with its enduring themes and searing emotions.

Directed and choreographed by Emmy® Award-winner and Tony Award®-nominee Joshua Bergasse, whose credits include Broadway’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and On the Town, Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” and NBC’s “Smash.”

Long before there was the jukebox musical, there was the musical revue, and few songwriters have as many fabulous songs worthy of a musical revue than Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. The show Smokey Joe’s Cafe, featuring 39 of their songs, opened in 1995, running for 2,036 performances. The revival of the musical at Stage 42 features an incredibly energetic cast of nine performers. Guy groups such as The Coasters and the Drifters originally performed many of the Lieber-Stoller songs. Smokey Joe’s Café boasts a talented quartet of male singers who perform these famous songs under the direction of choreographer/director Joshua Bergasse. While their combined sound is terrific, they display their own musical personalities as well. Jelani Remy has a great voice and is a marvelous dancer showing impressive athleticism in his dance routines. Towards the end of the show he sings the romantic “A Rose in Spanish Harlem” and performs a sensual dance with Dionne D. Figgins.  Dwayne Cooper uses his booming deep voice in some of the novelty songs like “Charlie Brown” asking, “Why is everyone always picking on me?”  John Edwards displays his soulful Ben E. King sound in “I Who Have Nothing” while …Read more