Playwright: Charles Bevel, Lita Gaithers, Randal Myler, Tom Taylor and Dan Wheetman, based on idea by Ron Taylor
Northlight Theatre, Skokie
Contact: ( 847 ) 673-6300,
www.northlight.org
Runs Through: June 19
By Catey Sullivan
The essence of the blues is perfectly captured in an image that comes about halfway through Northlight Theatre's Ain't Nothin' But the Blues.
In the photo projection, two men walk down a dirt road that seems to wind off into infinity. Their backs are to us. They are carrying tattered suitcases. They're moving on and out, down an anonymous road on a journey of uncertain destination. An illustration of equal parts hope and desperation, inspiration and resignation, the photograph is the visual equivalent of music that started in Africa, crossed the oceans in the belly of slave ships and morphed into the sounds of artists ranging from Huddie Ledbetter to Jimmy Rodgers to Robert L. Johnson.
Directed by Randal Myler, Ain't Nothin' But the Blues is a revue of music borne of sorrow and expressed with raw vibrancy. Here, we get the evolution of the blues in all its incantations: Haunting, a cappella chants ( 'Odun De' ) , Sunday morning spirituals ( 'Raise Them Up Higher' ) , backwoods country twangs ( 'Blue Yodel No. 1' ) , and clear-as-a-teardrop pop hits ( 'I Can't Stop Loving You' ) .
This is a cast that delivers, whether the music comes smoldering with the sexuality of 'Fever' and 'Wang Dang Doodle' or the evangelical joy of 'Members Only.'
In Mississippi Charles Bevel and Chic Street Man, the music becomes gloriously kinetic. Chic Street Man moves with the grace of a true rubberband man in his molten, slithering rendition of 'Sidewinder.' Then there's the hilarious 'Candyman,' a chirpy little song with a sweet melody as innocent as a lullaby and lyrics centering on a metaphor as subtle as John Holmes in a Speedo.
And check out the authenticity that comes when Gregory Porter starts singing about the Mojo of a hoochie coochie man: He's brandishing a white handkerchief, the primary color of VooDoo and the white magic its practitioners work.
Felicia P. Fields and Bobbi Wilsyn also bring the house down. Fields puts her all-but-patented brand of sass to work on audience members at one point, sashaying across the stage in a sequin-encrusted pink evening gown, squatting down squarely in front of a man in the front row, and drawling in her bourbon-over-gravel voice, 'So ... do you like pink?'
Then there's Wilsyn's indelible version of 'Strange Fruit,' Lewis Allen's melodic cry ( banned from radio airplay for years ) against lynching. The piece is simply harrowing, a thing of beauty and horror that Wilsyn delivers with all the respect and sorrowful solemnity that it demands.
The single significant flaw in Ain't Nothin' But the Blues lies in the casting of Roberta Duchak, an actor with a pure, undeniably powerful voice but a presence that's just far too perky for the show. Her Homecoming Queen perkiness and cutie-pie pouts are out of place here.