Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Time Out Chicago: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

by John Beer, Time Out Chicago

August Wilson’s 1984 play, his first to hit Broadway, meanders its way through a large variety of subjects, from slow-drag dance contests to the economics of early recording, en route to its explosive conclusion. A sort of Behind the Music before its time, Ma Rainey purports to tell the real story of a legendary Chicago recording session featuring blues chanteuse Rainey (Oglesby).

But its true topic is its sinuous, bedeviling line of African-American talk. The delicate, profane poetry of black men and women sparring with and seducing one another was the late playwright’s great subject; it keeps his work thrilling and deeply significant despite occasional forays into melodrama or heavy-handed thematics. Here, the backstage conversation of Ma’s backing band—philosophical and Afrocentric Toledo (Wilson), hotheaded upstart Levee (Alfred) and old hands Slow Drag (A.C. Smith) and Cutler (Cedric Young)—loops through quibbles and visionary reflections, all haunted by the legacy of racism and violence.

The production, Parson’s 12th at the helm of a Wilson play, which follows Court’s celebrated renditions of Fences and The Piano Lesson, is a tremendously sensitive, potent staging. James T. Alfred blazes as Levee, the role that launched a young Charles S. Dutton; during his second-act knife fight with God, it’s hardly possible to breathe. He and the other men form a brilliant, tight quartet as they trade insults and insights, while Oglesby commands as Ma Rainey, hinting at the costs of her impervious persona. Ma Rainey may not be Wilson’s most realized play (we’d give that honor to the more focused Fences), but Parson and his cast prove its enduring emotional and intellectual impact.