‘Ma Rainey’ belts out blues in August Wilson’s earliest work
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Music, power struggle, wisdom, laughter and then explosive tragedy — that’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” staged with assured familiarity by the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company. Whichever your favorite August Wilson play might be, the essential one, rather than “Fences,” the play everyone knows, is “Ma Rainey.”
This unexpectedly wise, shocking drama is how the great Pittsburgh-born playwright first burst into the American theater, fully formed at 39. The major themes are all there: the struggle of black men and women to claim their own in a white world, the legacy of the past frustrating the dreams of the future, the competing claims of individual and group and, as he said of all his plays, “love, honor, duty, betrayal.”
The driving engine of “Ma Rainey” isn’t just the struggle among the great blues singer, her band and the white men recording her songs, it’s also the blues itself, which Mr. Wilson always called the history of black America. As Ma says, “White folks don’t understand [the blues are] life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ‘cause that’s a way of understanding life.”
You may expect a musical drama about Ma, but you gradually discover the play is more about the four men of her backup band, whiling away the time in the band room, telling stories, bickering and laughing — there’s lots of
laughing. That may be the greatest surprise to the Wilsonian novice, the amount of humor. But here, the humor has the frank richness and dark underside of the blues.
The other surprise is that the play seems to be spinning in place. That’s its genius: to portray the group as its cantankerous self, with no obvious plot in motion. But gradually tensions increase and conflicts sharpen. Gradually we build toward a tragedy as brutal as anything by the Greeks or Elizabethans.
So that’s why “Ma Rainey” is essential: it shows Mr. Wilson’s dramaturgy fully formed in his first play, taking you on a rambunctious, chilling ride.
Mr. Wilson’s work is no stranger to Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, one of just 15 companies in the country to have staged all 10 plays of his American Century Cycle. Both the company and its founder, artistic director and stage director Mark Clayton Southers, are intimately at home in the world of August Wilson.
But what “Ma Rainey” was not this past weekend was completely ready for prime time. There are wonderful performances and powerful scenes, but the rhythm of the whole sometimes sagged, softening its inevitability and drive. There was an occasional slackness in the dialogue that should tighten with time.
As it is, the strength of the central performances give it all the feel of a triumph, beginning where it should in the four musicians: jittery Levee, old-school Cutler, intellectual Toledo and downhome Slow Drag.
Jonathan Berry’s Levee starts as the talented young hothead, abruptly challenging the pecking order. Then, as the levee starts to crack, we see his brutal past and thwarted present ready to engulf him and others. His unintentional foil is Wali Jamal’s warm, resigned Toledo, the well-read philosopher improperly understood. As Cutler, the imposing Chuck Timbers chafes feelingly under Levee’s ambition.
Even Sam Lothard’s seemingly cornpone Slow Drag reveals depths, witness his epic, improvised lament at the end of Act 1: “If I had my way, if I had my way, I would tear this old building down.”
The play’s other center of power is of course Ma herself, played by powerhouse multidisciplinary artist Vanessa German. She portrays all of Ma’s angry pride, belting it out like a declaration of black independence. There might be more nuance to find in Ma, but you don’t miss it, overwhelmed as you are by Ms. German’s own charisma.
The smaller roles are competent — the veiled sauciness of Shakirah Stephens’ Dussie Mae, the prickly frustration of Mel Packer’s Irvin and the sly wit of Malic Williams’ Sylvester.
Director Southers struggles with the necessary limitations of Diane Melchitzky’s set, forced to cram two separate acting areas into a small space. This curtails movement, but it does focus us more on the words, which constantly sing with the rich blues dichotomy of laughter and pain, protest and acceptance.
Digest “Ma Rainey,” and you’re ready for the epic riches of the American Century Cycle plays to come.