BALTIMORE — A reporter once asked the soul singer Donny Hathaway, “What would you be if you were not a musician?” His answer: “Dead.” So ends Ebony magazine’s posthumous April 1979 profile of Hathaway, appearing just two months after he was found lifeless on the sidewalk outside a Manhattan hotel where he was staying. As a result of his tragic end, fans and friends, especially those unaware of his diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic, publicly speculated whether his death was an accident, even though it was ruled a suicide. No such tension exist in “Twisted Melodies,” the one-man show about Hathaway that begins a five-day run at the Apollo Theater on May 30. Set in the Essex House hotel room on that fateful night, the play — written by and starring Kelvin Roston Jr. — explores the stirring sounds of Hathaway’s voice and his struggle with his mental health.

Source: New York Times May 27, 2019 18:23 UTC