The Man Behind ‘Five Guys Named Moe’

“Five Guys Named Moe,” opening Thursday for 12 weeks at UCLA’s James A. Doolittle Theatre in Hollywood, is actor Clarke Peters’ tuneful homage to ‘40s rhythm-and-blues star Louis Jordan. Five well-dressed Moes--Big Moe, Little Moe, No Moe, Eat Moe and Four-Eyed Moe--materialize out of a radio for lovelorn Nomax, a character loosely modeled on author Peters, and proceed to regale him and us with plenty of Jordan’s hit songs.

There’s some story line, but mostly the show’s an excuse for singing and dancing. “Moe” is in the tradition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” and “Sophisticated Ladies,” as well as “One Mo’ Time,” whose first British tour was directed by Peters.

“Five Guys Named Moe” has the same title as a 1942 Jordan hit tune with lyrics by Larry Wynn. Among the more than two dozen songs in the musical revue are that song, plus Jordan’s bestseller “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” “There Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens,” “What’s the Use of Gettin’ Sober” and “I Like ‘Em Fat Like That.”

The show started out as a cabaret routine that Peters kept shelving to take on new acting jobs in London. His credits range from “Othello” and “Guys and Dolls” to such “Moe”-like revues as “Bubbling Brown Sugar” and “Blues in the Night,” but it wasn’t until he played in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at London’s Royal National Theatre that a connection between Rainey and Jordan got him going again.

Peters took his idea in early 1990 to the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, a fringe theater in London’s blue-collar East End. Situated in what was once a flourishing theater center, it today draws from a neighborhood that is 40% Afro-Asian, according to the show’s London program, and is doing more shows with Afro-Asian writers, actors and directors.

Enter luck. “Moe” may have been Peters’ debut as a writer--he also played Four-Eyed Moe--but it happened that among its Stratford East audiences was mega-producer Cameron Mackintosh. Mackintosh, the man who brought us “Cats,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Miss Saigon,” apparently decided during intermission to back a commercial production of the show.

At the end of the show’s first act, Peters has said, Mackintosh talked with an executive at the Theatre Royal. And at the end of the second half, Mackintosh and Peters sat down to talk about a possible commercial transfer.

Mackintosh took the show to the West End’s Lyric Theatre, where it opened on Dec. 14, 1990, and is still playing. The show also opened at Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre on April 8, 1992, and closed this past May 2 after 464 performances.

As in London and New York, the Doolittle production will offer chances for the audience to sing along and, in the finale of Act I, even dance along.

The dance-along involves a conga line to “Push Ka Pi Shee Pie” that wound down in bar areas at both the London and New York productions, leading to strong criticism from some New York reviewers. Here in Los Angeles, where the show will kick off a national tour, a spokesman says the Doolittle isn’t adding to its existing upstairs bar and has no plans to set up a separate bar establishment as was done in New York.