Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert

Bob the Drag Queen, a former winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, debuts with a vivacious narrative that sees Harriet Tubman magically brought back to life. Revived in the present day along with a handful of other famous historical figures (Cleopatra has reinvented herself as an Instagram model), Harriet teams up with the narrator, legendary hip-hop producer Darnell Williams, to connect Black people to their ancestry through music. She introduces Darnell to her band, the Freemans, made up of people she freed from slavery. Among them are Odessa, who has a talent for singing and rapping; Buck, a strong and silent guitarist with an intelligent mind; DJ Quakes, so nicknamed because of his Quaker beliefs; and Moses the drummer, who’s Harriet’s younger brother. Darnell helps finish their album, and in turn, Harriet helps Darnell find self-acceptance, having fallen into obscurity after been outed as gay in 2010. Darnell’s reverence for Harriet, “America’s first Black superhero,” makes her feel alive on the page (“She sings as if Dr. Dre and Ella Fitzgerald had a daughter. Angry, strong, and smooth all at once,” Darnell thinks) and the pair’s dialogue provides a nuanced and quick-witted tour of Black history (discussing Black peoples’ complex attitudes toward Frederick Douglass in his lifetime, Harriet says, “I didn’t say ‘hate.’ You up here adding stuff. Everybody respected Frederick Douglass. Even racist white folk”). It’s a knockout. Agent: Tom Flannery, Vigliano Assoc. (Mar.)