Berkshire on Stage

It is 1930 and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as the Depression, is in full bloom.  The community is struggling to find a new life and though its inhabitants are reaping the rewards of the time, their finances are precarious.  This is the setting of Pearl Cleage’s problematic play Blues For An Alabama Sky at Barrington Stage Company’s Boyd-Quinson Stage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

In the raucous first scene we meet Guy Jacobs (Brandon Alvion,) a homosexual costumer for night club acts, and Leland Patterson (DeLeon Dallas,) a virtual stranger, who are helping a very drunk Angel Allen (Tsilala Brock,) a singer who has just been fired from the famous Cotton Club for throwing things at her married boyfriend from the stage.   Guy offers his apartment and support which seems to be a pattern for Angel who lives live on the edge.  Delia Patterson (Jasminn Johnson,) Guy’s next door neighbor, assists in quieting her.  Later that morning Dr. Sam Thomas, an obstetrician,  (Ryan George) drops in on Guy, and the people whose lives have been fated to cross have gathered.

Guy has been creating several costumes to send to Josephine Baker in Paris with the hope she’ll like them and invite him to join her company.  Sam and Delia, who is working with Margaret Sanger to bring a birth control clinic to Harlem, explore their relationship. Leland from Alabama and has been in Harlem for only a few days, visits Angel.  He informs her that his wife of two years and their newly-born son have died.  In his vulnerable state he is quickly  infatuated with Angel; she, however is focused on reviving her singing career, but never passes up an opportunity to find someone to protect her.

This is a long play (two and a half hours) and it feels long.  The first act is mostly exposition with small steps toward the climax of act two.  Much of the dialogue is repetitive and doesn’t go anywhere.  The drama of the work is in the second act.  

At a small gathering of the principals in Guy’s apartment, Leland learns Guy is a homosexual.  He calls him an abomination; Guy demands he leave.  This introduces a series of conflicts that grow involving all the characters and culminates in an act of violence.

The play, written in 1995, has several contemporary threads: homosexuality, birth control and abortion, Black culture and history (a lot of names are dropped including Langston Hughes and Adam Clayton Powell Jr, as well as Josephine Baker).  On that basis the play is interesting and dramatic, but it takes a while to get there.  Pearl Cleage has written plays, novels, essays and collections of poetry.  Most if not all her work centers on the challenges ethnicity and gender play in the world of black women.

Though the play may be flawed, the company brings strength and conviction to their roles, the staging and the body of the play.  Brock as Angel evinces a vigorous presence from her first  entrance and as the play evolves she elicits our sympathy; but she is also very much self-involved and has honed her survival skills by taking advantage of others’ good will.  She also sings a bit of “St. Louis Blues,” but not necessarily well. She is complemented by Alvion’s Guy who has most of the comic lines in the play while displaying a capacity for wisdom and bravery which endears him to us.   He, too, delivers a forceful performance.

Where Angel can be brash and hard, Johnson’s Delia is gentle and compassionate.  Though the character is emotionally restrained, she is charmed by the attention Sam gives her.  We admire her from her first appearance.  Likewise for Sam as played by Ryan George.  He is a solid member of the community with a sense of what is right or wrong  even if it creates a personal conflict.  He is the most rational of the Harlemites.  Dallas’s Leyland has a convincingly broad range of emotions that is, at first, unrealized Director Candis C. Jones tries to keep things moving at a strong pace, but some of the dialogue and situations slow down the dramatic build.  The play needs some cutting which would increase the tensions in the plot line.  Her staging is fluid considering there is a profusion of entrances and exits.  Most important, her characters are real.

The set by Sydney Lynne is atmospheric as it details the living room of two apartments separated by a hall, along with streets in front and at the rear of the building.  The furniture in the rooms creates a fitting sense of claustrophobia.  Danielle Preston’s costumes represent the time of the play’s setting.  The colors and the cut of the dresses and suits take us back to the ‘30’s.  The lighting design by Adam Honore employs myriad cues that focus attention on the areas of action while other parts of the set are in dim light yet visible to enhance the sense of the vital locations.      

A somewhat puzzling use of modern music for the pre-show does not set the mood for the rich cultural explosion of the Harlem Renaissance.  It seems discordant in light of the homage paid to this most enlightened and compelling time period.

Though the written play has flaws, its presentation has its scenes of interest and high drama. 

Blues For An Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage; Director:  Candis C. Jones; Cast: Tsilala Brock (Angel Allen) Brandon Alvion (Guy Jacobs) DeLeon Dallas (Leland Cunningham) Jasminn Johnson (Delia Patterson) Ryan George (Dr. Sam Thomas); Scenic Designer: Sydney Lynne; Costume Designer: Danielle Preston; Lighting Designer: Adam Honore; Sound Designer: Fabian Obispo; Hair, Wig and Makeup Designer: Earon Chew Nealey; Production Stage Manager: Hope Villanueva.

Running time: Two and one half hours, one intermission; 7/18/23 – 8/5/23; Boyd-Quinson Stage at Barrington Stage Company, 30 Union Street, Pittsfield,MA. For information and tickets go to their website at www.barringtonstageco.org or call 413-236-8888.