If Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, had a fault, it was in caring too much. Too much about family, music, and teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. Oh, and then there was the matter of erectile dysfunction on his first night in bed with Diana Ross. But she strokes his ego by skipping around the bed singing "I Hear a Symphony."
As curious as that moment is, it's one of the few when Motown: The Musical digs beneath a skimmed treatment of Gordy's rise to an undeniable force in forging a new soundtrack for an era. But in as much as Gordy himself wrote the book for the current Broadway hit, he gets to tell his story his way. And of course we all know that, beyond a self-valediction, it mainly exists as a clothesline on which to hang more than 50 songs �" some intact, many in excerpts �" from the Motown catalog.
Not only are they songs with wide touchstone recognition, the musical delivers them through facsimiles of dozens of the original performers. If these reproductions can push too hard in staging and arrangements, they are still enough to drive an audience wild, which sums up the reaction of the opening-night audience for the touring production at the Orpheum Theatre. And cheers turned into a roar as Berry Gordy himself took to the stage during the curtain calls, saying a few words and busting some pretty impressive moves for a man of 84.
A 1984 television special celebrating Motown's 25th anniversary bookends the story, as the musical opens with a sulky Gordy (an intense Clifton Oliver) in the first scene debating whether to attend the show reuniting so many artists who had left his label for more lucrative deals. That sulk is about as dark as the stage Gordy gets. He's surprisingly temperate, for example, as he accepts Ross' decision to end their personal relationship and later to jump ship to another label.
Beyond the story of Motown itself, Gordy's relationship with Ross (who is no diva in Allison Semmes' self-effacing portrayal) comes closest to a through-storyline. But neither the child they had together, the fact that she was married at the time, nor his seven other children with multiple wives and mistresses have any relevance in the story being told.
His children, you might say, are the musical acts he nurtured over the years, and it is on them that the focus most properly settles. Between schematic scenes chronicling a mogul on the make, songs come hurtling at us with amped-up arrangements and choreography that only occasionally push the numbers beyond satisfactory replications of, to name just a few, Jackie Wilson, the Supremes, Gladys Knight, Martha Reeves, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, Mary Wells, the Four Tops, and even the who-is-that Teena Marie.
Gordy's libretto and director Charles Randolph-Wright's staging give occasional attention to the increasingly volatile social issues of the late 1960s. Marvin Gaye wants to record an anti-war song over Gordy's objection, does so, and scores a hit. In one of the odder stabs at relevance, an angry crowd carrying Black Power signs confronts Gordy over his decision to replace Florence Ballard with Cindy Birdsong in the Supremes. Was that really a hot civil rights issue?
But these are but footnotes in the show. Motown: The Musical pretty much delivers on what its title promises. The surprise would have been if it had done more than that. And there is no surprise.
Motown: The Musical will run through Sept. 28 at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are $21-$45. Call (888) 746-1799 or go to www.shnsf.com.