Kwame Kwei-Armah's TLC Musical 'CrazySexyCool' Hits Arena Stage
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- CrazySexyCool, a new jukebox musical about TLC, is running at Arena Stage in Washington DC through August 9, weaving hits like Waterfalls, No Scrubs, and Creep into a chronicle of the group's success, illnesses, and Left Eye's 2002 death.
- Kwame Kwei-Armah wrote and directed the show, drawing its central friendship theme from TLC's 1992 track "What About Your Friends?" — and read an early draft aloud to surviving member Chilli, who cried and hugged him afterward.
- T-Boz (Tionne Watkins) responded to the script with "That's a great way to start," and Kwei-Armah continued making revisions with both surviving members' input.
- The leads are Holli' Gabrielle Conway as T-Boz, Jade Milan as Left Eye, and Stoney B Woods as Chilli, with choreography by Chloe O Davis who replicated signature moves down to "those Chilli knees" and immersive set pieces like a claw-foot bathtub full of Nikes set aflame.
- Choreographer Chloe O Davis flagged the production's rarity on Broadway-era stages: "There's not a lot of Black stories made by Black creatives in the theater."
- Kwei-Armah, the former artistic director of London's Young Vic, previously led a 2018 carnival-inspired Twelfth Night and the 2023 drama Beneatha's Place.
Why it matters: Choreographer Chloe O Davis's quote — "There's not a lot of Black stories made by Black creatives in the theater" — frames CrazySexyCool's all-Black creative team as a counterexample in an industry where such ownership remains rare, with the production's August 9 close at Arena Stage giving DC audiences a brief window to see a Black-led team tackle one of the era's biggest catalogs.
