Let the Good Times Roll!

Blues For an Alabama Sky

Welcome to the Harlem Renaissance. The bootleg champagne is flowing and the good times are rolling. It’s 1930 and Pearl Cleage’s exuberant and deeply moving play is sometimes funny and peppered with blues and jazzy music. But the play also provides a clear look at the lives of five very different individuals while tackling some serious social issues. Ms. Cleage’s drama celebrates the art, music, dreams and deep friendships forged within the urban African-American community during the Depression. Somewhere offstage are the shadows of luminaries like Langston Hughes, Margaret Sanger, Josephine Baker. But onstage we’re treated to four amiable and attractive New Yorkers whose lives are about to change, thanks to the blues brought on by a newcomer from Alabama.

When the play opens, an inebriated woman named Angel is being helped home by her best friend, Guy. Angel was a successful singer in a Harlem nightclub until she was fired that night. Earlier, during her performance on stage, Angel spotted her boyfriend in the audience with another woman. Angry and insulted, Angel stopped the show by calling him out. Naturally, the singer lost her job immediately, and now it looks like she’s going to be blacklisted by every club in Harlem. Life is about to become tougher for Angel than it already was.

The singer shares an apartment with Guy, a flamboyant, optimistic, gay bon vivant who, unlike Angel, always sees the glass as half full. A gregarious, talented and optimistic costume designer, Guy earns his living by creating beautiful wedding gowns, cocktail dresses and assorted costumes for chorines all over Manhattan. But the young man’s passion is to be hired by Josephine Baker as her designer and then move to Paris. To Angel, Guy’s ambition is just a silly pipe dream. While she generally supports her good friend, secretly Angel doesn’t believe he’ll ever achieve his goal.

Guy and Angel’s lives are entwined with two other friends. Delia, who lives just across the hall, is a sweet and somewhat naive social worker. Working with activist Margaret Sanger, Delia’s mission is to help African-American women, especially in Harlem, by providing proper sex education and birth control. She’s about to open a new family planning clinic in the area, with the help of Sam, a doctor who parties hearty by night and delivers babies by day. “Let the good times roll!” is his battle cry. All four are devoted friends, but there’s a possibility that love could be in the air for Delia and Sam.

The night that Angel stumbled home drunk, Leland, a recent New York visitor, chanced upon this circle of friends. When he pays a visit to Angel a few days later to return a handkerchief that she dropped that night, the newly-unemployed songstress finds this quiet, good-looking young man from Alabama attractive and appealing. Despite Leland’s strict religious beliefs and conservative views about relationships, birth control, marriage and sexuality, Angel convinces herself that life with this young man could be just what she’s looking for in life.

Mikael Burke has directed this production with vigor and a clear knowledge of the era in which Ms. Cleage’s play is set. But, to be fair, although the play’s set in Harlem during the Depression, the same conflicts and themes found in this period drama could easily be about America today. Gun violence, abortion rights, planned parenthood clinics destroyed, strict Evangelical beliefs, supply shortages and financial difficulties, prejudice against anyone who’s different and gay bashing are just some of the ideas that Pearl Cleage injects into her two-act drama. And director Mikael Burke allows each issue to surface naturally as the story unfolds.

Burke’s five-member cast is uniformly wonderful, thanks to his nuanced direction.Tiffany Renee Johnson gives a stellar performance as Angel. She’s a good friend and a fierce fighter, ready to do battle anywhere and anytime. More than anything, Ms. Johnson’s Angel would simply like a normal life and to not have to worry about money anymore.

Breon Arzell’s delightfully infectious Guy is someone we’d all like to have as a friend. He’s stalwart and steady and works toward a goal until he’s achieved it. Mr. Arzell’s happy-go-lucky character will help anyone, as long as he has the means. The actor brings his own swaggering style and sense of humor to this character and makes Guy the individual the audience remembers long after the final curtain call.

Jazzlyn Luckett Aderele is lovely, graceful and often humorous as Delia. She’s a bit conservative and somewhat naive but, like Angel, a fighter for what she believes. Paired with the easy-going Edgar Sanchez as Sam, these two characters, like Angel and Guy, seem to work best together as a team. They’re comfortable as partners, much like Rachel and Ross in the popular TV series, “Friends.” Mr. Sanchez is smart, kind, empathetic and always ready to lend a helping hand. The romance that eventually evolves between Delia and Sam is charming and hopeful. 

Ajax Dontavius plays Leland, at first with quiet caution. He seems like the perfect “Gentleman Caller,” both to Angel and to the audience. But as the play moves forward, Leland begins to feel more comfortable with his new acquaintances in his Harlem surroundings and he starts to show his true colors. The tragic ending that he brings to this story is horrible, but not unexpected. The climax is inevitable. It’s been foreshadowed by Leland showing Angel that he carries a pistol. The playwright follow’s the rule of Chekhov’s gun. He said that “if in the first act you see a gun, then in the following act it should be fired.” 

A little bit like a Tennessee Williams drama, September must be Pearl Cleage Month since two of her many plays are being performed in Chicago. Remy Bumppo Theatre’s Fall offering is a fantastic production of an important play. Not only entertaining, the drama reminds us that, truly, everything old is new again. You know that the audience was truly moved by this incredible cast because on opening night the audience rose as one in a standing ovation. 

Technically this production shines. For this production, scenic designer Lauren M. Nichols has created a lovely, believable two-flat apartment, along with the walkway and steps in front. Gregory Graham’s costumes are stunning and period-perfect, as are the wigs designed by Ray Sanchez. Becca Jeffords and Peter Clare have respectively lighted and developed a sound design for the production that enhances the story. If theatergoers want to experience a play that’s both priceless and powerful, and they’re ready, as Sam shouts, to “Let the good times roll,” don’t miss this terrific production. 

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented September 14-October 15 by Remy Bumppo Theatre at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the box office, by calling 773-975-8150 or by going to www.RemyBumppo.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.