MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM. To 25 November.

Manchester

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
by August Wilson

Royal Exchange Theatre To 25 November 2006
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm
Audio-described 11 Nov 4pm
BSL Signed 18 Nov 4pm
Post-show discussion 16 Nov
Runs 2hr 50min One interval

TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 October

A production so good, it’s to be hoped it’s not the Exchange’s last date with August Wilson
With her Black Bottom, Ma Rainey’s Queen of the Blues. And she lets the White Man know, turning up at his recording studio when she wants and walking out at any provocation. As her band say, she does it because, in a White Man’s world, her record-sales mean she can. And, as producer Sturdyvant (David Fleeshman, reigning-in impatience with difficulty) smashes shellac masters one after another and his assistant Irvin (Patrick Driver, a Mr Fixit who’s an ulcer waiting to happen) runs around, she succeeds.

Jacob Murray’s production’s played on a stage colourfully designed by Di Seymour as a 78rpm record with the title song large on the label. Robert Bryan’s lighting shifts starkly across the stage to emphasise the studio where Ma reins or her backing quartet’s place. If the comic energy’s generally on the studio side, it’s the talk of the boys in the band-room that makes the play.

August Wilson’s writing’s at its subtlest here. Like the subsequent plays he wrote before his death last year, each exploring Black American experience in a different 20th century decade, this jazz-age story has involving dialogue where long stretches pass with little overt action, engrossingly developing characters and ideas.

There’s a violent climax, true, in Ma Rainey, occasioned by a detail, a foot brushing against a shoe. The importance of that shoe was made apparent early on, just as the increasingly tense relationship of the people involved has been developed naturally, making the final eruption anything but melodramatic.

Meanwhile, Ma insists her nephew speak the introduction to her song, though he stammers (hence the spoiled shellac). As Daniel Poyser struggles with the words, the audience forgets he’s an actor giving the illusion of a speech defect. The playing’s that real throughout, from Johnnie Fiori’s commanding Rainey to the musicians’ contrasting temperaments, excellently played from Ram John Holder’s philosophical Slow Drag to Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s fierily uncertain Levee.

This is Murray’s best work yet at the Exchange, clear, sensitively-paced (plenty of time for all the characters and their views, yet never stodgy), and making the most of Wilson’s finely structured, slow-burning drama.

Irvin: Patrick Driver
Sturdyvant: David Fleeshman
Cutler: Wyllie Longmore
Slow Drag: Ram John Holder
Toledo: Antonio Fargas
Levee: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Ma Rainey: Johnnie Fiori
Dussie Mae: Kay Bridgeman
Sylvester: Daniel Poyser
Policeman: David Corden

Director: Jacob Murray
Designer: Di Seymour
Lighting: Robert Bryan
Sound: Steve Brown
Music: Tayo Akinbode
Dialects: Lise Olson
Fights: Renny Krupinski
Assistant director: Dan Bird

2006-11-05 23:55:17