Get ready, ’cos here comes The Temptations musical ‘Ain’t Too Proud’
James T. Lane couldn’t ignore the striking similarities between himself and Paul Williams.
Williams was one of the original five members of The Temptations, the storied R&B group behind 1960s and ’70s hits such as “My Girl,” “Get Ready” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.” Lane has become well-versed on Williams’ story ever since he began embodying the singer in the national tour of “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations.”
Like Lane, Williams was a skilled dancer, even at one point serving as the group’s choreographer. Also like Lane, he struggled with alcoholism, which might have contributed to his death by apparent suicide in 1973.
“I got to the other side of my troubles and was able to revive my career and live free of all that,” Lane told the Post-Gazette. “I get to celebrate the life of that as Paul, because he didn’t make it out. That’s not lost on me, how special that connection is between Paul and I.”
The musical chronicling everything from the band’s humble beginnings in Detroit through its rise to musical superstardom opened
Tuesday and continues through Sunday at the Benedum Center. Tickets are $ 33-$ 120 at trustarts.org. In accordance with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s updated COVID-19 safety protocols, patrons are no longer required to remain masked or present proof of COVID-19 vaccination upon entry.
Lane has strong connections to multiple Pennsylvania locales. The 44-year-old Philadelphia native briefly attended Carnegie Mellon University in fall 1996 before deciding to study musical theater at Penn State University instead. He
identifies as a gay man and said that the now-defunct Pegasus nightclub served as his first time out at a gay bar.
Though Lane has fond memories of his time in Pittsburgh, he ultimately wanted “less of a conservatory experience in college” and thus sought out Penn State.
“CMU was the place to go,” he said. “You went to Juilliard, you went to CMU. Those were the goals, especially back in that time. ... I just had to seek a different experience.”
He didn’t end up graduating from Penn State either, after being cast in the European tour of the musical “Fame.” He booked his first principal Broadway role as Richie Walters in 2006’s revival of “A Chorus Line” and has continued to work steadily on Broadway for the last 15 years in shows including “Chicago,” “The Scottsboro Boys,” “King Kong” and “Kiss Me Kate.” As Lane put it, he is a “busy, busy, busy guy.”
R&B music was a staple in Lane’s house growing up, so he became familiar with The Temptations’ discography from a young age. At that point in his life, he wasn’t fully aware of their whole story. He mostly knew just “the happy parts and the music,” but working on “Ain’t Too Proud” gave him a crash course in the group’s history and helped him see The Temptations as more than just that band whose songs often appear in contemporary commercials.
“The story is tragic, but the music lives on,” Lane said. “It’s part of the fabric of our lives as Americans.”
It’s wild to Lane that The Temptations are technically still around and that 80-yearold original member Otis Williams is still performing with them. As an actor, he loves how there’s so much rich material to tap into with The Temptations and that the musical provides a space to lay out the lives of these Black icons.
“It is absolutely amazing that there is a musical of African Americans that tells a full story,” he said. “Usually, African Americans are relegated to a sliver of a peek at someone’s life in someone’s musical. We are rarely the subjects of full storylines.”
In addition to how he and his fellow cast members “go into the depths of these men,” Lane promised that “Ain’t Too Proud” will feature most of The Temptations’ biggest hits, with appearances from other seminal Motown figures like Smokey Robinson, Berry Gordy Jr. and The Supremes. He joked that folks who grew up with The Temptations’ music “are like putty in our hands” when they hear them break out those songs.
This will be Lane’s first time playing the Benedum stage since he was in Pittsburgh with the “Fame” tour’s U.S. leg. He’s excited for this opportunity to visit Pittsburgh and “get back to landmarks that are very important to me” — including his beloved Eat’n Park.
“It always feels good to go retrace your steps and make new memories there,” Lane said. “I’ll go and visit Carnegie Mellon and maybe go to Eat’n Park. What a journey as an artist that I get to be on and revisit some places.”
His final rallying cry to get Pittsburghers pumped up for “Ain’t Too Proud” evoked one of The Temptations’ most famous songs: “Get ready, because here we come.”