Archives for February 20, 2020

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the New York premiere of Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

It’s February—or, as it’s known in the theater business, August Wilson Month. That’s a sly reference to the fact that February also happens to be Black History Month, the time of year when theater companies with white artistic directors are notorious for going out of their way to revive shows by black playwrights, after which they usually consider their duty done until next season. 

More often than not, this means either one of Mr. Wilson’s plays or Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” but a growing number of ambitious companies are starting to dig deeper and come up with lesser-known works deserving of much wider attention. The latest of these is Keen Company, one of my favorite off-Broadway troupes, whose new offering, Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” received its premiere in Atlanta in 1995 and has since been staged throughout the U.S. but is only just receiving its first major New York production. About time, too: Ms. Cleage’s tale of a pair of misfits from Georgia who come to Depression-era Harlem in the hope of leading more abundant lives is quietly poignant and beautifully wrought, and Keen Company’s staging, cast to absolute perfection and directed with supreme delicacy by LA Williams, is pleasing in every imaginable way.

At the center of the action are Angel (Alfie Fuller), a would-be nightclub singer, and her roommate Guy (John-Andrew Morrison), an openly gay costume designer. They share a tiny New York apartment but want to move to Paris to pursue their careers in a country where they can live more freely. Angel, however, is more hard-boiled than Guy, and would be content—or so she supposes—to marry for money. “I’m tired of Negro dreams,” she says bitterly. “All they ever do is break your heart.” Enter Leland (Khiry Walker), an unsophisticated, fresh-off-the-bus widower from Tuskegee who falls in love with Angel at first sight….

“Blues for an Alabama Sky” isn’t without flaw—Ms. Cleage gets a bit preachy once or twice—but for the most part she steers well clear of the obvious. I was struck by the impressive assurance with which she sketches the lives of Angel, Guy and their friends, who also include Delia (Jasminn Johnson), a idealistic young neighbor who is setting up Harlem’s first family-planning clinic, and Sam (Sheldon Woodley), a middle-aged doctor who unexpectedly falls for Delia. I was struck, too, by the unselfconscious sweetness and warmth with which Ms. Cleage portrays her five characters…

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

An excerpt from the Court Theatre’s 2017 Chicago revival of Blues for an Alabama Sky, directed by Ron OJ Parson:

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about one of music’s most mysterious powers. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Music is the most mysterious of all the arts. Incorporeal and seemingly without intelligible meaning, it nonetheless has a powerful effect on most of those who hear it—though not all….

Not the least of music’s mysteries is that so many of us turn to it in times of trial. That’s what Philip Kennicott did a few years ago. A once-promising pianist who is now the senior art and architecture critic of the Washington Post, Mr. Kennicott decided to try to learn Bach’s Goldberg Variations after the death of his mother…

Anyone who has resorted to music under like circumstances, whether as a player or merely a listener, will find much to ponder in Mr. Kennicott’s reflections. One of them, though, struck me particularly hard, not because it recalled my own experience but because it didn’t: “I bristle at the idea that music is consoling or has healing power. It is a cliché of lazy music talk, the sort of thing said by people who give money to the symphony and have their names chiseled on the wall of the opera house….”

I scarcely know where to start disagreeing. To be sure, most of the over-familiar words spoken by those who sympathize by rote with the plight of a mourner or caregiver are ineffectual at best, irksome at worst, leaving you with no choice but to paste a fixed half-smile on your face and say something equally meaningless in response. But music is different, in part because it speaks another, deeper language. When Beethoven, who understood suffering well, gave a copy of his Missa Solemnis to Austria’s Archduke Rudolf, he inscribed it as follows: “From the heart—may it return to the heart!” Moreover, countless listeners have similarly testified to the power of music to miraculously bypass the greeting-card banalities of reassurance and help heal a shattered heart….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

The Busch String Quartet plays the “Cavatina” from Beethoven’s Quartet in B Flat, Op. 130:

Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic perform a transcription for string orchestra of the same movement:

I’m picking up a Zipcar and hitting the road later today for a three-night caregiver’s holiday on Long Island Sound. During my absence, Mrs. T will be looked after around the clock by the doctors and nurses at New York-Presbyterian, whom I have no doubt are equal to the task.

I managed to get three Wall Street Journal columns in the can this past week, meaning that I won’t be bringing work of any kind with me. Instead, I plan to spend the long weekend looking at the water, sitting in a hot tub, watching movies, reading for pleasure, and ordering room service. I might tweet, or I might not. If I don’t, not to worry: I have plenty of nothing to do. Either way, I’ll see you again on Sunday.

Till soon.

*  *  *

Gerry Mulligan plays Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” in 1965, accompanied by Pete Jolly on piano, Johnny Gray on guitar, Jimmy Bond on bass, and Hal Blaine on drums:

“All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.”

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations