Imagine a night in the musical theater where you get compressed versions of “Funny Girl” and “Funny Lady” plus “Funny Grandma” with a coda of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that includes the song “What a Wonderful World” by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss.
The shapeless and meandering new show “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical” opened Monday at Studio 54, and we can only be grateful that its creators left out the jazz legend’s childhood in New Orleans. The book by Aurin Squire tells the story of Armstrong through his four marriages. Squire doesn’t really make it clear if Armstrong (James Monroe Iglehart) kept marrying essentially the same strong woman or if Squire could not distinguish the prostitute Daisy Parker (Dionne Figgins) from the trained musician Lil Hardin (Jennie Harney-Fleming) from the Hollywood wife Alpha Smith (Kim Exum) from the Cotton Club headliner Lucille Wilson (Darlesia Cearcy, the vocal standout of the show).