Having to wait for one month out of the year to buy candy hearts with cute sayings imprinted on them is no big deal. After all, those hard little wafers have lost much of their appeal now that they're more likely to break my aging molars than attract a valentine. It's an outrage, however, that I have to wait until February, and the advent of Black History Month, to find playwright August Wilson and talented local black actors on area stages. At the Little Stage in Miami Beach, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom delivers both, along with something else that's been in short supply: a terrific evening of theater.
Ellen Davis, a retired faculty member of the New World School of the Arts in Miami, expertly directs the show, and as producer she put up her own money to pay the ten-member cast and rent the 85-seat, black-box theater. The result is a moving show that shames the region's more established theaters, which have failed to present Wilson's award-winning works, including Fences (a Pulitzer and a Tony), The Piano Lesson (another Pulitzer) and, of course, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (a New York Drama Critics Circle Award).
While other theaters regularly reach out, and often pander, to South Florida's diverse audiences by producing plays about Hispanics, Jews, gays, and seniors, they rarely explore the black experience. Some complain that it's too tough to find enough talented black actors to fill a cast; yet, almost every year, several local black actors are nominated for and/or awarded Carbonell Theater Awards for outstanding performances. Others argue that, in a mostly white market, black-oriented productions are box-office poison. Explain that to the black touring companies that come through town and do quite well. The fact is, a good play, no matter what its racial makeup, touches just about everyone.
August Wilson's plays are outstanding. Produced in regional theaters across the country, his six major works (Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Two Trains Running and Seven Guitars round out the repertoire) are each set in a different decade and feature characters searching for a sense of self while participating in the black race's struggle for recognition and a national identity.
In Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the setting is a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Ma Rainey, "The Queen of the Blues," is due any minute to kick off a recording session. The real-life Gertrude Pridgett Rainey started out in vaudeville-style song-and-dance acts, for which her stage name was either "Ma" or "Madame" Rainey. She was one of the first entertainers to use the blues in her act, and as the genre caught on, she became popular. Between 1923 and 1928, she recorded 92 songs for Chicago's Paramount label.
Rainey was quite a character. A flashy dresser, she had a big heart but a volcanic temper. She was also bisexual, and rumors linked her to protege Bessie Smith, with whom she toured on the blues circuit.
While the plot of Wilson's play is completely fictional, the set looks like something the real-life Rainey would have visited. Set designer Michael McKeever's rundown studio is split into two areas clearly delineated by Dale Ripingill's fade-up and fade-out lighting design: a recording room and a band rehearsal room. The hard-backed chairs, scarred pianos, and bare floors peg the owners as people concerned more with the artists' money-making potential than their comfort. Like most black musicians at the time, Rainey was paid a flat fee for recording sessions but no royalties -- even though she composed more than a third of the songs.
Against the back wall is a sound control booth, occupied by two white people, who are obviously in control of the session, the black musicians, and the profits. Warning Rainey's manager Miss Irvin (Donna Wood) that he won't put up with any more of the singer's "Royal Highness Queen of the Blues bullshit," studio owner Sturdyvant (Ablan Roblin) reluctantly agrees to record four more songs, hoping they'll sell better than her last releases. Swing is overtaking the blues on the charts, and Sturdyvant and Irvin take advantage of Rainey's tardiness by changing the proposed song list and adding an upbeat introduction to the tune "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."
Waiting on Rainey gives Wilson a chance to focus on the four musicians in her group. Switching from playful jive to painful tales of discrimination, their rehearsal-room banter is the backbone of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and the actors play the script's tonal changes like a tight four-piece band.
Early on, Cutler (Wayne Thompson), the guitarist, shares a joint and trades stories with Slow Drag (Roland Baker), the bass player. They talk of women, big dreams, and whether anyone they know has actually sold his or her soul to the devil.
Talk of the devil eventually leads to thoughts on how one gets ahead in a white man's world. Polishing his horn, Levee (Kevin Springs) thinks he has the answer: the intro to "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," which he wrote and hopes will lead to future business with Sturdyvant. As ambitious as he is, Levee is also bitter; at one point, he spits out a harrowing tale of how white thugs destroyed his family when he was a child. His revenge: becoming a successful bandleader.
