Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Play (1984)
by August Wilson

Directed by Liesl Tommy

Huntington Theatre Company
Boston University Theatre
Boston, MA

Clint Ramos (Scenic and Costume Designer), Marcus Doshi (Lighting Designer), Broken Chord (Original Music, Sound Design, and Music Direction), Leslie Sears (Production Stage Manager), Kevin Robert Fitzpatrick (Stage Manager)

With Thomas Derrah (Sturdyvant), Will LeBow (Irvin), G. Valmont Thomas (Cutler), Charles Weldon (Toledo), Glenn Turner (Slow Drag), Jason Bowen (Levee), Yvette Freeman (Ma Rainey), Joniece Abbot-Pratt (Dussie Mae), Timothy John Smith (Policeman), Corey Allen (Sylvester)

The scene is set in 1927, in a Chicago music recording studio run by a Caucasian named Sturdyvant (Thomas Derrah). Ma Rainey (Yvette Freman), a famous African-American blues singer, is scheduled to record a number of songs. Her backup band first appears. It is a mixed and varied bunch of African-American men, each with a story to tell. Some time later, Ma Rainey enters with an additional entourage, and the recording, managed by Sturdyvant and by Ma Rainey’s manager, Irvin (Will LeBow), gets underway. As the recording session unfolds, a powerful chemistry of hope and despair develops, and ultimately provides the source of dramatic unravelings.

Ma Rainey was August Wilson’s first Broadway success and it is easy to see why. Though long and not economically written, it delivers a powerful punch. In the end, what seems like endless lyrical meandering comes to fruition. One comes to understand vividly, through that delicate interplay of critical drama with a background of seeming uneventfulness, something of the particular plight of African-Americans in the early twentieth century.

The main character of the play is Levee (Jason Bowen), the trumpeter for the band, an ambitious, energetic young musician who composes, and aspires to publish his works.

I have enjoyed Jason Bowen in numerous productions at the Actors’ Shakespeare Project, and he gives a brilliant performance in this role. His powerful energy fuels a series of dramatic culminations superbly; his second-act soliloquy addressed to the Almighty spurred an enthusiastic ovation. His conveyance of charisma, defiance, frustration and despair is virtuosic.

Each of the other band members comes across in his own distinctive voice while singing similar songs about the plight of African-Americans. Toledo (Charles Weldon) expounds philosophically while telling the story of isolation and abandonment. Slow Drag (Glenn Turner) gives a riveting account of the humiliation of a black preacher. G. Valmon Thomas (Cutler), provides appropriate ballast to the quartet.

Yvette Freeman (Ma Rainey) – one might recognize her for her long-time supporting role on the television drama, ER – is a forceful stage presence and ably conveys the sense of a shrewd, no-nonsense woman of business. Her heart of gold shows itself in her bringing along of Sylvester (Corey Allen), a support singer with a horrible stutter whose family needs the money.
Allen is suitably vulnerable in that capacity.

In the role of Ma’s companion, and Levee’s love interest, Dussie Mae, Joniece Abbott-Pratt provides an alluring and lively presence.

It was great to see the long-time ART alumni, Thomas Derrah (Sturtyvant) and Will LeBow (Irvin), provide dramatic support in the roles of studio owner and Ma Rainey’s manager. I had seen each of them shine in major roles recentlly – Derrah as Mark Rothko in Red at the Speakeasy Stage, and LeBow in Superior Donuts at the Lyric Stage.

I have seen a number of August Wilson’s plays – and this was clearly the most compelling for me. Its rhythm reminds me a bit of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, which, for its first three hours is long-winded and ponderous, but whose last hour’s drama makes up for all the rest. It also brought to mind the focal tension of a much tauter recent play about African-Americans, Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks. That masterpiece operates on a smaller scale – it is a two person, not a ten person, play, and shorter – but the dramas and heartbreaks are parallel in ingenuity and intensity.

– BADMan