Tonight caps unforgettable week for all

It’s been an unforgettable week. And tonight will be no exception.

Tonight, Monroe Kent is coming back to town to stage “Unforgettable: The Nat King Cole Story” at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

“I have to give the college incredible kudos for timing,” the Tony Award nominee said. “It is a very interesting time to tell this story, after Martin Luther King Day on Monday and after the inauguration on Tuesday.”

Cole, who was born in Montgomery, Ala., in 1919, rose from a jazz pianist to one of the most recognizable popular singers in the 1950s and ’60s. Popular, but still not without his racist detractors. Cole was once attacked while performing on stage in his home state and, in 1957, his weekly variety show was canceled because there weren’t enough advertisers willing to sponsor a TV show hosted by a black man.

Kent, who tells Cole’s story through word and memorable song, is hoping that the events of this week don’t alter his performance tonight.

His soft baritone rolls rich in the memory of Tuesday’s inaugural.

“I had to work in New York the night before, so I didn’t even get in until 12:30,” Kent said. “All I wanted to do was go to bed. But I didn’t want to miss anything, so you kind of make yourself stay up and keep your eyes open.

“It just started reverberating in some sort of strange way as I was running the lines in ‘Unforgettable.’ It is pretty wonderful just to see how far we have come as a country.

“For me, there was a great pride. Whether or not he is a great president — that is not what I am happiest about. I understand that he is just a man like any other. He has to deal with the same politics.

“What I am excited about is that my America, our America, made a choice, which was so huge. That inclusive nature of it all. I think something shifted for all of us on the day he won the election.”

Kent said it was a vote for America.

“In that respect, I keep thinking of this show and, in some ways, it feels funny,” Kent said.

He is worried that the election will change the way he stages the show, because “it changed me,” he said. 

“I am trying to stick to the script, to the extent that the story I am telling is accurate and historical and because of what it was — that’s what makes moments like this week that much more powerful.

“I have to be careful not to undermine how it was twenty , thirty years ago because of how I feel as

a person today. As the actor I have to understand that tale that I am telling was real for its moment. That’s what makes the moment we are in now so much more powerful.”

It’s been a powerful and well-received show for Kent for nearly nine years. But it was a show that he originally turned down.

“It was written by Mr. Clarke Peters,” Kent said. “Clarke Peters also wrote ‘Five Guys Named Moe,’ which played on Broadway and the West End.”

Kent happened to be starring in “Five Guys Named Moe” on the West End when Peters opened “Unforgettable” at another theater around the corner.

“Because he had toured it so much and had done so much to get it up, he asked me would I leave his one show to take this show from him,” Kent said. “That is how I inherited it.”

But not so fast.

“The truth is I actually declined,” he said. “I was in a wonderful show that I loved. It was comfortable, and even though there were six people in the show, doing a one-man show really unnerved me.”

He didn’t say yes until six months later.

“It was only because at that point my mother had passed and some other things happened in my life,” he said. “There are moments in your life where you kind of feel like you can do other things and you don’t really care if things fail. You need something really big.

“It was a challenge I needed to get out of the little bit of the rut I had gotten myself into. Life and death things really show you what life is about, so it didn’t seem so important whether or not I failed the show. So I said, ‘Yes, sure, I will do it.’ ”

It was a choice he hasn’t regretted. Although he takes long breaks from the show to produce other works, he still is drawn to Cole’s story. A story that he admitted he learned only by doing the play.

“Most of us, what we want most in our life, is choices,’’ he said. “But the moment we find ourselves in a situation where there are choices, we are immediately scared to make one. I always try to keep in the front of my mind, ‘Remember when these things are exciting and these things are necessary.’ That way I can always be willing to make changes when necessary.”

Make a change … or work hard not to change a work that has fared so well. It is a work that he calls a one-man show reluctantly.

“I am backed by three of the most incredible musicians,” Kent said. “Edison Herbert has been my musical director in all my productions for the past nine years. It is rare that your musical director is your guitarist. It is usually your pianist, but he is just a wonderful talent there.

“Mr. Justin Gilbert a young man who, if you can keep him from playing every note on the piano, good luck. And a gentleman by the name of Wayne Batchelor, is a phenomenal bassist. We can’t wait to put this together.

“We are so excited, just as much from a musical standpoint, as it does from the actual script and theatrical storytelling of it all. So all the people may look at it as a one-man show, but I certainly do not. Because they are my safety net in so many instances in that music. The music just stays alive because of them.”

The story of Nat King Cole — who died of lung cancer 40 years ago next month — will come alive tonight because of Kent.

“It is kind of interesting when you do something for a long period of time that you just grow into it,” he said. “You can’t make a mistake because you know where everything is. The excitement for me will be refinding it. And realizing that even though I rehearsed a show in my head, that lines have different weight.”

Especially after this unforgettable week.

Tickets to tonight’s 7:30 show in the V. Earl Dickinson Building are $20, $15 for students and seniors.