A glorious revue of the history of the blues at the Black Rep

Ron Himes’ amazing Black Rep company is opening its 48th season with a piece of pure delight.  It’s called “Blues in the Night,” and it’s a glorious musical revue of the history of that genre.  And such a vastly diverse history that is, with vaudeville songs, deeply moving songs of love and loss, lush and lonely excursions into real jazz, and comic novelty songs that get seriously, hilariously bawdy.  There are songs of simple need, like “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”.  There are jaunty songs like Ellington’s “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-so”, there are gorgeous musical complexities like  Billy Strayhorn’s incomparable “Lush Life”.

This show brings you into a world of memory (if you’re at least reasonably old)—memories of true greats like Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Bennie Goodman, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen. Vernon Duke.

The show is set in a cheap hotel in Chicago in 1938.  Scene designer Jamie Bullins gives us a warm, detailed view of three rooms and the bar.  The tenants are

•    The Woman (Adrianna Jones):  In her thirties, perhaps.  She once lived the high-life, but oh, how she’s fallen—but she’s slim and sleek and classy still.

•    The Girl (Amber Alexandria Rose):  She’s younger, and still aspiring, but she too is on hard times and has had painful bouts of the blues.

•    The Lady (De-Rance Blaylock):  She’s a veteran of vaudeville and the rough life of black touring performers in those decades.

Drifting through the lives of these ladies is:

•    The Man (J. Samuel Davis):  He is good news and bad news, a scoundrel, a flirt, a lost love, a hope.

The Black Rep is famous for its wonderful musicals, and the talents gathered here are right up with their best.  

I’ve watched J. Samuel Davis for several decades on St. Louis stages.  He’s always excellent, and  he has a remarkably strong rich voice.  The years have been kind to him;  his hair has attained a quite handsome gray, but he moves and dances with youthful grace. In this show he’s at the top of his form.  The character he plays is often a bit of a stereotypical “cool black guy”, but (like George Clooney) Davis is so utterly confident in his own gifts that he can gently, modestly mock himself.

Adrianna Jones, in an elegant sleek gown, is every bit the Harlem Renaissance sophisticated lady that Ellington had in mind.  Her singing is full of subtleties and deft use of dynamics.  In “Stompin’ at the Savoy” she starts off slow and lovely, then builds to  a compelling excitement.  She gives us a rich, heart-breaking “Lush Life”.

Amber Alexandria Rose has a vast range.  She shows us in “Taking a Chance on Love” that she’s a lady who can “belt” with the best of them.  Yet in “Willow, Weep for Me” she can evoke a titanic sorrow.

As the old trouper from vaudeville De-Rance Blaylock gives delicious renditions of several great old Bessie Smith comic songs, and she’ll stun you with some powerful “shouting blues” that make the walls tremble with grief.

Some of the lyrics (as in Bessie Smith’s “Kitchen Man”) are more than a little bawdy.  .  These three women have a deep appreciation of—and a considerable appetite for—the physical elements of romance.  The performers clearly relish their own curves.  They have healthy fun with the anatomy of love.  When all three sing “It Makes My Love Come Down” it gets—well, shall we say “lubricious”?  Throughout the evening they show us the great pain that human love can bring—but also the fundamental ironic comedy at its basis.

All in all the songs are like the best cabaret you’ll ever see.  There are no spoken lines;   it’s all song.  And (thank God) they give us not just the “chorus” but also the “verse” of all these great songs.  

The arrangements are superb—complex, overlapping, intricate, simple, fundamental.  

The band is simply perfect!  They are: Willem van Hombracht (bass), Khalid McGee (piano), Bernard Long Jr. (drums), Brady Lewis (trumpet), and Stan Coleman (reeds and flute).  These gents are so bluesy, so suave, so easy.  That low, sexy, moaning sax!  That rich, close walking bass!  Flawless!  Sound designer Justin Schmitz somehow makes them deeply present and three-dimensional.

Kudos to music director Khalid McGee, costumer Gregory J. Horton, lighting designer Travis Richardson, choreographer Heather Beal.

And a great big kudos to director Ron Himes for this beautiful production, which opens his Black Rep company’s 48th season.

“Blues in the Night” by Sheldon Epps continues through September 22nd at the Edison Theater at Wash U.