‘Ma Rainey’ has contemporary feel
The key difference between an August Wilson production and a standard white or European period piece is that the Wilson play doesn’t sound antiquated.
In a Russian or Britishorigin play, actors love to adopt faux European accents that make them sound both sophisticated and ridiculous. This happens in 20th-century American works, like Tennessee Williams, as well. But good actors in good Wilson productions don’t sound like they’re in a historical re-enactment.
That’s partly because actors of color don’t have the same expansive canon of affect and pretension — of white queens and white squires and white star-crossed balcony lovers — to draw from. It’s also because Wilson was a master of the vernacular, whose themes surrounding black identity remain, unfortunately, timeless. His verbal rhythms carry an every-
man yearning that, despite all odds, sounds strikingly like how people still talk today.
So yes, Timothy Eric, who plays the disgruntled trumpet player Levee in Ensemble Theatre’s excellent restaging of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” says “colored” and “reefer.” The stage features old-school microphones and Jazz Age suits and ties. But everything else about the play — the jokes, the stories, the complaints, the petty fights masking larger traumas — feels utterly contemporary.
In this production directed by Eileen Morris, Eric trades barbs and tells stories in a manner that suggests he knew exactly what his character was talking about. Even in 2018, the reasonings behind this man’s playboy demeanor, hiding decades of quiet outrage about to shatter and explode, remain relatable.
Levee is a band member for the seminal blues singer Ma Rainey (an incandescent Roenia Thompson). He’s an anti-conformist with an anarchic streak bordering on psychological meltdown. Eric doesn’t play him as a basket case, though. The actor sees him as an ordinary man facing the terrible odds of everyday life and refusing to confront his brokenness.
Bandmates like Toledo (Wayne DeHart flaunting both wisdom and comedy) and Slow Drag (a jovially measured Jason Carmichael) serve as both foil and mirror to Levee’s struggles against whiteness. Each man believes they’ve found the best way to persist under the circumstances of living while black in America, and they’re intimate enough with each other to offer criticism. They police each other’s blackness because they see themselves in each other, but the result often comes across as judgment. These are dynamics that play out in living rooms, board rooms and on television to this day.
The banter stops when Cutler (a layered Wilbert Williams) brings up religion. Levee, who experienced a hate crime at a young age, asks Cutler how could God exist when He allows such bigotry to exist in this country. How could this God truly be a black man’s God when history — and the present — shows that He’s crafted by and in servitude to the white man?
Cutler doesn’t allow such nihilism. Cutler chooses faith. He chooses to believe in divine supremacy rather than white supremacy. Levee scoffs at this. Their worldviews offend each other despite living on the same side of history: under America’s boot. As a greedy white studio owner demeans Levee’s presciently beboptinged music, then steals it from him, Levee smiles and shuffles his feet. But Eric’s darting eyes and swaggering posture make you wonder if he’s swallowed a lethal dose of pride.
Scene designer James V. Thomas’ stage is separated into foreground and background — the basement in front, the recording studio in back. Levee’s blistering monologues take place underground, where the spotlight of the entertainment industry doesn’t shine, but where he’s closest to the audience. We see that Wilson is curious what happens to black trauma when it’s allowed to show itself unvarnished, without the need to pander to a white gaze. The basement is the perfect metaphor for subterranean existence.
Levee is a beautiful character in this way, a tragic hero who Eric knows is buried underneath sleek ties and polished shows, deferential nods and “yes sirs.” The ending should not be a surprise. That the audience doesn’t gasp but rather nods silently during the play’s dramatically surprising scenes shows the blistering, obvious thesis behind any contemporary Wilson revival: It doesn’t feel like a day has passed since 1927.