Review: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM at A Noise Within

“All right, boys, you done seen the rest…now I’m gonna show you the best. Ma Rainey’s gonna show you her black bottom.” – Intro to “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”

The above-quoted line, purported to be a straightforward song intro, actually proves to be a fairly weighty piece of text within the context of MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, August Wilson’s 1920s era-set play about a day with the Mother of the Blues. Much hinges on whether Sylvester, the stuttering nephew of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey will be able to speak that line or whether it will need to be jettisoned, giving way to a new song arrangement written by the trumpeter Levee. Make no mistake, there is a lot more at stake within the fate of this intro than everybody realizes.  

Over the course of his 10-play Century Cycle, Wilson has repeatedly shown us the best and the rest of what American drama can embody. Hot on the playwright’s trail – or rather, running parallel - is Pasadena’s A Noise Within, which has committed to staging the entire cycle. With MA RAINEY, the company is three plays away from completing the feat. Director Gregg T. Daniel conducts a muscular cast  delivering a production that is as fulfilling as it is shattering.

Set in 1927, the play is the only entry in the cycle that does not take place in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Our locale is a Chicago recording studio in which a celebrated Black entertainer can flex her authority only for as long as she has something that white businessmen want. Because outside that studio, on the streets of Chicago, the formidable Ma Rainey would be as powerless as any Black person. And she knows it. As do Slow Drag, Cutler, Toledo and Levee - the hired members of her band, a few of whom are trying to chart their own path out of oppression.

The action of MA RAINEY begins with the buildup to Ma’s arrival as Sturdyvant (Matt Foyer) , the white owner of the studio, frets with Ma’s manager over her arrival. “I’m not putting up with any Royal Highness, Queen of the Blues bullshit,” he tells Irvin, because Ma has sung here before, and he has dealt with her in the past.  

The band members arrive for their work before Ma, affording them time to do some light rehearsing and banter in the studio lounge. When Ma actually makes her entrance, she does so trailing a car wreck that her manager is forced to clean up and with a small entourage featuring her nephew Sylvester (Francis C. Edemobi) and Dussie Mae (CJ Obilom), her much younger lover. Between fits and starts, Ma being Ma doing things her way, and other interruptions, some live music gets laid down.

As engaging as the recording sessions are, the meat of the play is the interplay between the band members which Daniel stages into the lounge downstage on Tesshi Nakagawa’s wide open and richly-detailed set. Musically and certainly personally-wise, they’re a finely-tuned instrument. There’s Cutler (Kai A. Ealy) the band leader and trombonist, the rule-following liaison between the musicians, Ma and Irvin, a man who knows the landscape. Fun-loving bass player Slow Drag (Alex Morris) is replete with bigger-than-life stories whether about the Devil or himself. Pianist Toledo (Gerald C. Rivers), is older, more intellectual and the only one of the musicians who can read.  Also arriving late is Levee (Jamar Gilbert), the live-wire trumpet player, a man who will spend his entire week’s pay on a fancy pair of shoes and use them to strut his stuff and dance to the beat of his own horn. Given Levee’s personal demons and the urgency of his desire to break free and play his own music, a clash is inevitable.  

Over the course of the company’s work on Wilson’s Century Cycle, Danniel has used Morris, Ealy, Rivers and Bert Emmett multiple times. It’s not exactly an August Wilson repertory company, but these players are making some beautiful musical together. And some equally harmonious discord. Newcomer Gilbert struts and blows like he owns the very joint that he is also too good for. His magnetism is hiding something dangerous

As much as this is a play largely populated by men, the arrival of Ma Rainey – in the person of Amber Liekhus – establishes a new set of stakes and kicks MA RAINEY into a different gear. Ma is an artist, a celebrity (in 1927 she would have been 41) and also a proud Black woman who recognizes too well that both her stardom and its attendant clout may be on the wane.

Accordingly, her bouts with Irvin and Sturdevant may seem petty and ego-driven. In Levee, who is as eager to defy her musical instructions as he is to steal her girlfriend, Ma recognizes a legitimate threat and the tension between the two actors is appealingly at a high pitch.  Liekhus, who sings with power and joy, can tap into Ma’s authority and also disappear into her bluesey rendering of “Black Bottom.” And when she utters a line like “If you colored and can make them some money, then you all right with them. Otherwise, you just a dog in the alley,” this Ma is speaking not just for herself.

Daniel’s winning production offers up bursts of humor, the fables for which the playwright is celebrated and a moment or two where any civilized theater-goer will have his heart firmly lodged in his throat.  It figures to be both a momentous and a very sad day when A Noise Within brings the cycle to a conclusion.

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM continues through September 20 at 3352 E. Foothill Blvd. Pasadena.

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