Review: TRINITY REP'S BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY ENCHANTS

Some plays are like clockwork: the lights come up in medias res, and we watch, fascinated, as the gears turn — the surprise and delight being the journey. Such is the case with Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky, in the enchanting, gripping production now running at Trinity Rep.

Set in Harlem as the neighborhood’s Renaissance falters under the weight of the Great Depression, Blues follows five neighbors whose dreams collide during one sweltering summer of 1930. As the economy begins to sour, questions of racism, gender roles, and reproductive rights begin to roil the community — an all-too-relatable state of affairs.

In Trinity Rep’s richly detailed staging, director Jackie Davis draws top-notch performances from a uniformly excellent cast. While the plot is telegraphed practically from the opening scene, Cleage's vivid characters and gorgeous dialogue make for an intense, often devastating, evening of theatre.

As Angel Allen, a glamorous blues singer, Cloteal L. Horne enchants. Staggering into the action, drunk, after telling off her gangster lover and getting fired mid-performance, Horne is the fixed star around which the rest of the play’s sky revolves. It’s a deep, nuanced role, and she takes us on a heartbreaking journey through chaos and resilience. It is a bravura turn.

Locked out of her sugar-daddy flat, Angel depends on the kindness of her gay friend Guy Jacobs, a Costume Designer who dreams of Paris and Josephine Baker. Taavon Gamble offers a perfectly tailored performance, full of self-aware charm and dark wit. His timing is impeccable, and his ability to shift between empathy and steely resolve is impressive.

Across the hall is a mousy social worker (with a spine of steel), Delia Patterson, who’s working to open a birth control clinic with Margaret Sanger’s backing. Meagan Dilworth, in her Trinity Rep debut, delivers a slow-burn performance; as complications mount, she lets us glimpse Delia’s heart and fire, and the result is radiant.

One of the most delightful characters in recent theatrical memory is Sam Thomas, the neighborhood doctor who delivers babies and bathtub gin with equal relish. In this larger-than-life, almost Shakespearean presence, long-time Trinity Rep actor Dereks Thomas has the role of a lifetime, and he inhabits every moment with gusto. It is a tour de force.

Helping Guy walk Angel home is a soft-spoken newcomer from Alabama, Leland Cunningham. It’s difficult to describe without spoilers, but it’s safe to say that Quinn West gives a performance that becomes increasingly — and chillingly — unsettling as the story unfolds.

The world of Harlem is vividly rendered. From the moment you enter the theater, your eye is drawn to Michael McGarty’s spectacularly detailed set, stuffed with period-accurate knicknacks (including perhaps the finest treatment of a New York front stoop this reviewer — who grew up in Brooklyn — has ever seen on stage). The costumes, designed by Amber Voner, are equally splendid: precise in both cut and fabric, they evoke the era while working seamlessly with Erica Lauren Maholmes’s crisp, evocative lighting. Combined with Larry D. Fowler Jr.’s atmospheric sound design — where the nearby El rumbles and jazz floats past — the effect is one of immersive, time-traveling realism.

Director Jackie Davis has given us a gift. This work, written in 1995 but set nearly a century earlier, still speaks with urgency. Davis ensures that we don’t just encounter abstract “issues,” but rather the lived realities of these particular people. She makes us feel what it’s like when a dream begins to slip from our grasp — and how, even then, we survive, sometimes thrive, and always hold tight to each other. This is a powerful show, and the cast’s grace and commitment make it feel deeply — sometimes painfully — alive. Highly recommended.