Battle 1 Preston Battle Terry Silver-Alford Theatre 100, Section 002 October 2, 2008 You Can Wear Any Shoes to Swing I attended the last showing of Murray Horowitz's and Richard Maltby, Jr.'s Ain't Misbehavin: The Fats Waller Musical Show, at the University of Tennessee's Clarence Brown Theatre on September 27, 2008. The Director, actors, Stage Manager, and Costume Designer and were not affiliated with UT but were provided by their respective professional unions, but the rest of the production was executed by UT Graduate Students as well as other longtime UT Theatre employees and local artists. The production reached fruition through the lively combination of swing music and choreography with a contemporary take on an early 1930's set, and five very talented actors who's voices harmonized beautifully, and it truly showed the audience how entertainment was done “back-in-the-day:” a sometimes dangerous and illegal mix of gangsters, hot pianos and cold gin with red-hot passion being expressed on the dance floor. It is how the cast and crew presented this show that made it such a success: the show does not focus seriously on the problems surrounding the particular culture that it is recreating, but rather it pays homage in a tongue-and-cheek fashion to the swing movement, Harlem Renaissance, and especially Fats Waller, a piano player who came from nothing to become on of the leading jazz musicians during the Nineteen-Twenties and Thirties. Ain't Misbehavin' is more of a musical revue of jazzy tunes, many of them Fats Waller's, than a traditional musical because it is not driven by a conflict, so there is no action or character development other than the occasional wardrobe change. The play begins and ends in an almost identical fashion: with flashy dance moves and the usual swing parties and big-band numbers that get the crowd energized. The flow from one musical number to another happens through comical and dramatic {text:soft-page-break}