Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: "All they want is my voice"
05 May 2018

by Drew Rowsome -

A little conceptual sleight of hand elevates Ma Rainey's Black Bottom from a historical artifact into incisive contemporary commentary. It's no secret that the music industry, and much of the culture around us, was built on the backs of many now distantly remembered black musicians and innovators. Soulpepper and playwright August Wilson lure the audience in with a backstage story and a glamourous blues star dressed in sequins. But Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is not a musical - though the songs and performances of them are exhilarating - it is a meditation on how black men in the '20s, and it's not much of a leap to apply it to today, were ripped off, pitted against each other and struggled to survive in a toxic world.

Like the musicians, the audience is lead to believe they are getting one thing, but they are getting something else entirely. The only difference is that in this case, the audience is the winner.

The set is a wonderful slice of magic realism, with the white men - manager and producer (Alex Poch-Goldin and Diego Matamoros) - perched high above the stage. The band is relegated to a rehearsal space far below. Ma Rainey (the luminous Alana Bridgewater) and her entourage occupy the centre space, struggling to move from one world up to the other, caught in between. Split second light and sound cues create a solid authenticity that is bolstered by powerful performances.

On another level Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is about the stories we tell ourselves, the mythology we create to survive a world that is inexplicable. The focus is firmly on the band members who bicker and spin tall tales and attempt to explain to themselves, and each other, just how systematic racism can exist and how they are going to not be destroyed by it. The main conflict is between Levee the trumpet player - a star turn from Lovell Adams-Gray who burns up the stage with a flamboyantly physical performance solidly supported by the ability to shift personas from seductive to maniacal in seconds - who plans to beat the system by sheer force of talent and charm. Opposing is piano player Toledo - the strong but suffering Beau Dixon (Hamlet) who knows more than he can express and whose entire physicality shows stolid wear and tear and latent rage - who is trying to find solutions and solace in research and a faith in the written word.

A dapper Lindsay Owen Pierre and a suspiciously taciturn Neville Edwards round out the quartet and they too get their turn in the spotlight, often when least expected. The four ride the words, flowing and overlapping and turning on a dime, a flood of thought, anger and resignation. Wilson's text is old-fashioned and schematic, but so deliciously detailed and written that it grips and draws the audience into a world that is other but emphatically current. The four are an ensemble that plays together with all the skill that only session musicians who have been around several blocks can create. And who are delighted to be given such rich musical words to work with.

The supporting cast are all worthy of their full stories being told. Marcel Stewart's stuttering nephew's triumph would, in a more conventional backstage story, be a cathartic moment of elation. Virgilia Griffith (The Wedding Party, They Say He Fell) spins and twirls as a woman making her way with the only currency she can rely on, her beauty and erotic allure. Her attraction to Ma Rainey may be one of convenience, but it is definitely a burning one, and Griffith's journey from coquette to vixen with Adams-Gray generates real heat. 

It would be wonderful to have a full evening of Bridgewater strutting and singing. There is a subtle aching vulnerability lurking just beneath her force of nature persona and Bridgewater plays it delicately and heartbreakingly. But a musical tour de force would be a different play. Just as Bridgewater is denied a microphone - except, tellingly, for the manipulators above - to amplify her vocals, Ma Rainey rails that "All they want is my voice." All of the characters are struggling to reclaim or even find their voices and it a tour de force that Wilson gifts the voices to them.