Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Collectively, the bravura actors in Court Theatre’s revival of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” — the play that put August Wilson on the map when it was produced on Broadway in 1984, and was the only one of his 10 plays about African-American life in the 20th century to be set in Chicago — have probably performed in most, if not all of Wilson’s mighty cycle by now.

And their superb director, Ron OJ Parson, has staged two other memorable revivals of the playwright’s work (“The Piano Lesson” and “Fences”), both at Court. That probably explains why everyone involved in this dazzling production seems to be living in the drama as opposed to simply performing it. Yet it doesn’t quite suggest the full brilliance of the work now on view. For that, as the saying goes, you really must be there.

The Court production also leaves no doubt as to why “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” created such a stir when it opened a full quarter century ago, signaling the arrival of a galvanic writer for the American stage — one who possessed a masterful, highly distinctive voice from the start, with poetry rooted in colloquial speech but heightened by a touch of pure magic.

One essential conceit of “Ma Rainey” is that while its principal characters are musicians, none of them actually plays instruments as part of the performance, though they do sing at times. Rather, the music comes from their speech, with Wilson (who was rooted in the blues, which he described as the music of storytelling) crafting solos, duets and ensemble riffs with language alone.

The play unfolds in the 1920s, in the shabby rooms of a Chicago recording studio (designer John Culbert’s multilevel set works ideally). It is here that a group of session musicians gather to record with blues legend Ma Rainey (Greta Oglesby, imperious and earthy, with a slow-burning heat in her voice and a sensational costume designed by Jacqueline Firkins). She has earned her white-owned record company a good deal of money over the years and has no intention of letting them forget it.

Three of her musicians are well into middle age, have found their own way of dealing with racism and have played for this grande dame for a long time. They include Rainey’s veteran arranger and horn player Cutler (with Cedric Young perfectly tuned as the man holding on to the status quo); Slow Drag, the bass player with plenty of spice left in him (A.C. Smith brings the house down with his juke joint dancing), and Toledo, the mellow “philosopher-intellectual” of the group (Alfred H. Wilson is simply beyond sublime). Stirring up the waters is the trumpet player and songwriter Levee (James T. Alfred is a veritable firestorm), who is younger, angrier and more volatile than the others. Creatively hungry to push the music forward, he faces resistance from Rainey and Cutler. And for many additional reasons he gradually is pushed to a tragic breaking point.

Kristy Johnson plays Dussie Mae, the sassy (and hilarious) girl who challenges Levee, with Kelvin Roston Jr. as Sylvester, Ma’s stuttering nephew (a character who had the 8-year-old girl seated near me laughing up a storm).

A remarkable production.