STAGE REVIEW : Power of Wilson’s ‘Ma Rainey’ Goes Beyond the Recording Studio

In August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the blues-singing Ma is able to exact a little revenge on the white music producers who exploit her by demanding unquestioned obedience in the only place she can rule, the recording studio.

Outside, she’s treated like a nobody, an overdressed “nigger” who can’t even hail a cab, but inside she’s “Madame” Rainey, the “mother of the blues.” The producers go along. They know her songs sell big, and they can afford to kowtow, at least until the cuts are waxed and she has signed the release forms.

It’s that searing irony and the larger frame of this country’s history of racism that Wilson’s much-praised drama tries to bring into focus. The Hal Marienthal-directed Cal State Dominguez Hills production, which played at Cypress College over the weekend, sympathetically approached Wilson’s vision and, despite some sporadic acting, came away with generally powerful results.

The time is 1927 and the place is a depressing studio in downtown Chicago. The star is Gertrude (Ma) Rainey (played by Melanie Curtis-Andrews), a large, imperious woman with a looming ego, great voice and mean mouth. Things go her way or they don’t go. Ma may have to put up with a load of garbage on the other side of the door, but, by God, she won’t put up with it here.

The producers know the price is cheap. Ma gets $200 for a few songs (the band gets $25 a man) that will sell for thousands. What’s a little abuse when there’s all that money to be made? Sure Ma, anything you say. You want a Coke? Hey, go out and get Ma a Coke. You wanna do the song that way? Well, if it really means that much to you.

Ma isn’t fooling herself, though. Once the recording is done and she’s been given the cash, she says: “It’s just like I’d been some whore, and they roll over and put their pants on.” But as long as she keeps her airs--the demanding ways, the fur coat, the flashy red dress, the subservient entourage that follows her everywhere--Ma’s at least got something over them all.

The boys in the band admire Ma for her prideful tenacity, but they, too, know what’s really going down. Although they probably wouldn’t be able to spell it, they know what subjugation means and have experienced it from New York to Fat Back, Ark. While waiting for Ma to appear, they avoid rehearsing by smoking “reefer” and jawing about this and that. We hear about their aspirations and deep scars. These are sad, harrowing and funny stories.

The bookish, philosophizing Toledo (Robin D. White) talks about the purity of the African ideal and laments that his people have drifted so far from it. The shuffling Cutler (James Miller) recalls how a gang of crackers turned a black preacher into a clown by making him dance at gunpoint. The piano-playing Slow Drag (James A. Goins) doesn’t say much; he’s not interested in trouble talk. You get the feeling he doesn’t think whites have much fun, though.

Then there’s Levee (Dennis H. Filer), the self-obsessed young trumpeter and ladies’ man (he just can’t stay away from Ma’s hip-bouncing girlfriend). He can’t keep his mouth shut, either. Levee despises whites but also sees them as his salvation. Maybe if he smiles enough and keeps giving his songs to the producers, they’ll give him his own band. Then he’ll be famous, more famous even than Ma.

He also loathes being black (“God hates the black man,” he bellows), and it is his violent confusion, his vain delusions and the overriding feeling of betrayal that provoke the devastating conclusion of “Ma Rainey.”

The only one that really gives Ma a hard time is Levee, and it’s not just his leers at Dussie Mae (Vickie Denise McCloyn). With his dreams of a “hot-jazz band” and denunciation of Ma’s blues as “jug-band music,” he threatens the little bit of glory she’s gathered for herself.

But Curtis-Andrews, with her imposing physique and sternly handsome face, made Ma more than a match for Levee. This is a woman who is weary of it all but still has enough gumption to keep on pushing. Curtis-Andrews did seem a bit perfunctory now and again, as if she was content to let Wilson’s dialogue carry the show, but she did bring enough to the character to make her live.

The actors who form the band also had some fine moments. White revealed Toledo’s thoughtful core by holding back any actorly impulses; Goins carved pure personality out of Slow Drag, and Miller had the moves and inflections of an old man down perfectly.

Filer’s Levee, however, was a performance of small peaks and shallow valleys. Boasting about his dandy new shoes (they cost him a week’s pay) or staring heavenward to pick a fight with God, he reached the right pitch. But at other times, he slipped out of tune and became too self-conscious, too studied.

Since “Ma Rainey” is much like two plays in one--the action shifts from the band working out in the rehearsal room to Ma’s drama in the studio--the set must be able to gracefully divide the action. Rex Heuschkel solved the problem with two effective spaces separated by a single wall. These depressed gray rooms, raw with age and disrepair, were a fitting place to find the blues.

“MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM”

A Cal State Dominguez Hills production of August Wilson’s drama. Directed by Hal Marienthal. With Larry D. McClelland. Mike Duran. James Miller. Robin D. White. James A. Goins. Dennis H. Filer. Melanie Curtis-Andrews. Vickie Denise McCloyn. Archille W. Herbert. Tom Casey. Set by Rex Heuschkel. Lighting by Steward Christie. Costumes by Janet Grabert. Performed at Cypress College.