Stage Review - Blues for an Alabama Sky (Seattle Rep)
Stage Review - Blues for an Alabama Sky
Presented By: Seattle Rep - Seattle, WA
Show Run: January 30 - February 23, 2025
Date Reviewed: Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Run Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes (including a 15 minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
There have been a lot of reviews over the past year or so in which I found myself writing about a show, describing it as something to the effect of unfortunately timely, meaning that regardless of how old the show is, and I’m thinking about anything from Cabaret to Second Samuel, to A View from the Bridge, the play or musical in question deals with topics that, by all accounts, should have been extricated from our society by now, but alas they are matters in history that we are doomed to repeat. When I interviewed Valerie Curtis-Newton, Founding Artistic Director of The Hansberry Project, a few weeks back about the latest show that she is directing, Blues for an Alabama Sky, on stage at the Seattle Rep’s Bagley Wright Theater through February 23, she mentioned one of the things that drew her to this particular play was that it deals with topics that seem so timely, including homosexuality, women’s reproductive rights, and racial injustice (to hear the interview, visit https://youtu.be/iwqkR-iMQSk?si=QzH4n1UtimnUmRWx). The play, written by Pearl Cleage, is set just after the period of the Harlem Renaissance in the summer of 1930, and right in the middle of the Great Depression. Blues for an Alabama Sky is about a group of friends, dreamers who have migrated to Harlem from the South, to that pre-Depression creative hotbed, and now find themselves looking to escape the current hard times in America, and in Harlem in particular, and take their dreams further afield. However, all of their lives are about to be impacted by the arrival of a newcomer with old ideas, an event that will throw all of their lives into chaos.
This isn’t the first time that Valerie has directed this play, she first oversaw it in September of 2022 at Playmakers Repertory in North Carolina, but on a much smaller stage. With the infrastructure that Seattle Rep offers, including the larger stage and access to a turntable, she’s had the ability to take her original vision and expand on it. With the help of Scenic Designer Matthew Smucker, Lighting Designer Porsche McGovern, and Sound Designer Larry D. Fowler, Jr., Blues for an Alabama Sky is transportive in the way it feels like the Harlem of the Great Depression, and narrative in the way it takes advantage of the Rep’s turntable to move the perspective of the same room on the set from one scene to the next, much like the cinematic use of camera angles. does in film The set represents the apartment complex where Guy, a self-described “notorious homosexual” and fashion designer, lives with friend Angel, a recently fired Cotton Club singer. The two live across the hall from Delia, a champion for women’s reproductive freedom who is trying to get a clinic built in Harlem to help neighborhood women with family planning. The set is wonderfully appointed, the stage right apartment belonging to Delia is just her kitchen but nicely designed, and on stage left is Guy’s, much bigger, his living room multi-leveled with his sewing/work area raised up above his sitting area. There are plenty of seats, which is a good thing because at times in the play, every character is in the room. Before the show begins, when the audience walks into the theatre, they see none of this, though, and no, there’s no curtain hiding the stage, there’s only the front of the apartment building. The show begins with Angel, drunk after being fired from her singing job for confronting her boyfriend, who she found out married someone else, being led home by Guy and a handsome stranger to the front of this apartment complex, the facade that the audience has been looking at since they entered the theatre. The stranger leaves them at the door, Guy and Angel walk in, and the front facade of the building rises to reveal the inside of the apartment building, Delia’s and Guy’s apartments split by a hallway. The stagecraft is so well done, and the use of rotation to provide focus and perspective makes it really come alive and when a scene requires the exterior of the building again, there are a few, the facade is lowered back down.
Beyond the set, there is the overall mood that is set by Porsche’s lighting, and most of that is backlighting behind the set piece that is on the turntable. It’s generally dark in the space behind and to the sides of the apartment complex, but the way that it’s subtly lit ties into the emotion of each particular scene, and contributes to the bluesy feel of the piece. Adding to that atmosphere are the interludes, the accompaniments to the stage rotation or dropping of the building facade, of blues trumpet playing from musician Nathan Breedlove. I love this touch, as a particular scene goes dark, Nathan sliding out from the shadows to play, from stage left, or right, or even on the fire escape stairs above the building. Melanie Taylor Burgess’ costumes are also important to the design, from Angel’s Cotton Club dress, shiny and frilly, looking like it was ripped directly from the Jazz Age, to Leland’s buttoned up wardrobe, to the high wasted look of Jamar’s pants and the costumes his character is creating for the famous Josephine Baker, the black singer and dancer living abroad.
One person on the creative team I haven’t mentioned yet is Tré Cotten, the dialect and singing coach. Ayanna Bria Bakari’s Angel is the singer, and Tré’s work with her provides the bluesiest of deliveries from her clearly excellent voice. But it’s the accent work, between Jamar Jones as Guy and Ayanna as Angel, both with dialects that represent well their southern origins but also their newfound residence in Harlem. Meanwhile, Esther Okech Lewis and Yesef Seevers as Delia and local doctor Sam, both native Harlemites reflect differently in their delivery, and finally Ajax Dontavius as Leland, who is just up from Alabama comes with an accent reflective of that. Alex’s Leland just happens to be that mysterious stranger that helps Angel home that evening from being sacked at the club, along with Guy. And even though it’s Guy who is initially intrigued by the newcomer, “notorious homosexual” that he is, Leland takes a shine to Angel and eventually tracks her down, beginning a courtship that turns the entire group’s world on its head. Leland, as a more conservative southern black gentleman, is a disruptor among this group of friends, set in his ways and not inclined to accept the more progressive social climate in Harlem. Upon finding out that Guy is gay, his response to Sam’s defense of Guy as a good and honest man is that Guy is “not a man like you or me”. And when he learns of Delia’s intention to open a clinic to provide family planning services to the women of Harlem, his challenge to that is to say that the solution to a “woman who doesn’t want children is a man who does”. Each of these attitudes is clearly in conflict with how Guy, Angel, Delia, and Sam feel, but his promise to Angel, to be there and take care of her is enticing, something she’s never had and could be worth it for her to put up with his other opinions. Leland is the outlier in this cast of characters and Ajax plays him so well, never veering from the heart of the portrayal, which is complex in that while his viewpoints don’t gel with the others, they’re all he’s ever known, so the question becomes how much can he be blamed for him, though he can surely be blamed for his actions, and the heartbreak he’s felt in his life surely contributes to his desire to support Angel.
Angel, meanwhile, has been relying on Guy, who has promised to take her to Paris, as soon as word from Josephine comes, calling on him to join her to design costumes in the CIty of Lights. The promise is extended to Angel, through Guy, but it keeps getting delayed, and when Leland arrives, the promise from Guy just may have taken too long. Jamar’s performance as Guy is positive and hopeful, despite being a gay man in 1930 Harlem. In the role, Jamar shows a lot of humor, his character clearly using that as a tool to work through the pain of his own struggle, he’s fighting the good fight, so to speak. On the other hand, the pain that Ayanna’s Angel is feeling is palpable, and the actor presents that expertly, as she does with the new hope she finds when Leland arrives and the conflict when she finds out his views on homosexuality and birth control. Ayanna has created a character that the audience can fall in love with, and whose hearts can break right along with hers.
On the other side of the hallway, Esther’s Delia has found an ally in Yusef and Sam, an older gentleman who wants to put his past and his reputation behind him and find a true love in his life at the same time that she is looking for the same thing. These two are wonderfully sweet together, it’s fun to watch their relationship grow, and heartbreaking when the unthinkable happens. Esther’s Delia is quiet and demure, shy and conservative in her dress, while Yusef plays Sam as a much larger character, funny and opinionated, but someone with a good heart who is able to break down Delia’s walls. Together they’re a united front in the building of their family planning clinic and as a couple even more so. The best illustration of each of these characters’ personalities comes in the second act, during “high tea” when they all meet in Guy’s apartment. It’s in these conversations when Leland and Delia begin to conflict, while Guy and Sam try to break the tension with humor, and it’s in this scene when the seriousness of the play becomes clear, how Angel is going to be forced to choose between her principles and her friends and the security of Leland. It also sets into motion a series of events that seems so familiar to what is happening in our society and in our politics now, and what makes this play such an important piece of art.
Though Blues for an Alabama Sky is set in 1930s Harlem, it sure feels topical with its themes of economic struggle, women’s reproductive rights, and differing attitudes toward human sexuality. Valerie Curtis-Newton always finds a way to present important works that amplify black voices amid these experiences using exquisite designs and by casting brilliant actors to tell stories that matter. Blues for an Alabama Sky is the latest example of a piece that matters to all of us in a time of up upheaval in our country, a play that is so wonderfully produced and presented, it can’t help but make an impact. Let’s hope that its message spreads beyond the walls of the theatre.
Blues for an Alabama Sky runs on stage in the Seattle Rep‘s Bagley Wright Theater through February 23. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.seattlerep.org.
Photo credit: Nate Watters
