“Black and Blue and Jazz All Over”
The late August Wilson, whose ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle
chronicles the African-American experience by placing each (except one) in
Pittsburgh during a different decade of the 20th century, never used a barroom
setting. On the other hand, the jazzy, sexy Paradise
Blue—the second play in Dominique Morisseau’s Wilson-inspired Detroit
Trilogy (the others are Detroit ’67 and
Skeleton Crew)—takes place in one.  |
| J. Alphonse Nicholson, Simone Missick. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Paradise Blue, which premiered at the Williamstown
Theatre Festival in 2015 and is now making its New York debut (with two of its
original cast members) at the Pershing Square Signature Center, is reminiscent
in many ways of Wilson’s work, including its racial attitudes and poetically
colloquial black dialect.
Morisseau’s highly actable and often humorous dialogue reveals
the hardships black musicians of the time faced, especially when seeking work
in white clubs, where all sorts of restrictions were placed on them and they
were treated poorly. Although it falls a bit short of Wilsonian stature, it’s
not hard to consider this always engrossing work, sizzlingly staged by Ruben
Santiago-Hudson, the saloon drama the great playwright never wrote.
It’s 1949 and we’re at the Paradise Club, a blues and bop jazz
hangout on a downtown strip called Paradise
Valley, known for its musical contributions, in Detroit’s black community
of Black Bottom.
 |
| Keith Randolph Smith, Kristolyn Lloyd, Francois Battiste. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
The club is realized in the Linney Courtyard Theatre by
designer Neil Patel on a stage viewed from two facing sets of bleachers: on one
side is the bar and entrances to the kitchen and street; in the middle are
nightclub tables and chairs, as well as places for musicians and soloists; and
at the other side is a slightly raised bedroom. Overhead, a large sign running
from one side to the other and ringed with electric bulbs, shouts PARADISE. Rui
Rita paints the tired place with just the moody lighting you’d expect and the
characters wear Clint Ramos-designed clothes that speak instantly of a time and
place.
 |
| Francois Battiste, J. Alphonse Nicholson, Keith Randolph Smith, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
When the lights go down, a recorded set of original jazz by
Kenny Rampton, sounding live (thanks to great sound from Darron L. West), prepares
us for a story about a guy named Blue (J. Alphonse Nicholson, charismatic if
too insistently intense). He’s a good-looking, talented, but blocked trumpet
player who’s also the proprietor of the struggling club, where music is played,
drinks served, and rooms are rented. Spotlighted with his horn to his lips, he
begins to play when, suddenly, there's a gunshot quickly followed by a blackout.
 |
| J. Alphonse Nicholson, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
The temperamental Blue, battling the demons of a tragic
family past, rules the joint with the help of his cute but proper girlfriend, Pumpkin
(Kristolyn Lloyd, sweet and comely), who allows Blue to take advantage of her good
nature as the place’s chief cook and bottle washer. Escape lies in her love of
reciting the poetry of Harlem Renaissance poetess Georgia Douglas
Johnson and, as we ultimately learn, surprisingly, a hidden talent for singing hot jazz.
 |
| Keith Randolph Smith, Kristolyn Lloyd. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
This being one of those plays where patrons never seem to
visit the business represented, Pumpkin’s audience is limited to the overweight
piano player, Corn (Keith Randolph Smith, impressive), a gentle, middle-aged widower
who serves as the peacemaking voice of reason, and the slick, self-confident, percussionist,
P. Sam (Francois Battiste, coolly magnetic), who will eventually have an eye
for Pumpkin. Early on, Sam’s upset because the high-strung Blue has fired the
band’s bassist, without which their Black Bottom Quartet is an unemployed trio.
 |
| J. Alphonse Nicholson, Simone Missick. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
One more character shows up, however, a mysterious female stranger
who convinces the distrustful Blue to rent her a room. Her name is Silver
(Simone Missick, stealing all her scenes), and she’s a seductive, cash- and pistol-packing
mama in black, straight out of a film noir (all she needs is a private eye), who walks with such
undulating sensuality you can practically hear the watching eyeballs popping.
 |
| Keith Randolph Smith, Simone Missick. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Considered a black widow with a deadly bite (which Corn
discovers is actually pretty tasty), she’s one smart Louisiana cookie. Viewing
Black Bottom as a land of opportunity for free black souls like her, she
advises Blue on how to run his club, advice he wants no part of. You know
trouble’s brewing, though, when she later informs Pumpkin on how to stand up to
her man and teaches her how to shoot a gun.
 |
| Kristolyn Lloyd, J. Alphonse Nicholson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Blue, wrestling with an inability to recapture his musical
gift, has secretly decided to sell the Paradise to the city for $10,000 as part
of the new mayor’s neighborhood redevelopment plan (which doesn’t augur well
for the black population) so he can move to Chicago, taking the reluctant Pumpkin
with him. Everyone, for their own reasons, is opposed to the move, which they
believe will be Blue's selfishness robbing them of a place they consider a sanctuary
from the biased world’s harshness. When the numbers-playing Sam wins a lot of
money, he and Silver come up with a counterplan.
 |
| Simone Missick, Ktistolyn Lloyd. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
And therein lies the rather conventional plot. Things grow
increasingly melodramatic, however, and the late accumulation of developments and
their contrived resolution bring the play to an ending that, for all its shock
value, is as hard to buy as a Saturday night orchestra seat to Hamilton.
 |
| J. Alphonse Nicholson. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
Paradise Blue,
absorbing as it is, too frequently has the feel of something you’ve seen and
heard before, probably in some of those August Wilson plays. It nonetheless proves
once again that Dominique Morisseau is a playwright to follow, whether she
continues to focus on Detroit or to widen her scope, as in her recent Pipeline.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Linney Courtyard Theatre/Pershing Square Signature Center
489 W. 42nd St., NYC
Through June 10
