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Ladylike Whoopi Goldberg dulls edge of Wilson's disturbing play

Saturday, February 08, 2003

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

NEW YORK -- August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" is a wonderful, bluesy, tragic-comic encounter with frustration and fury. But this revival doesn't get it all. You can hear that from the very start, as the house lights go to half and a recorded song by Ma Rainey, the great 1920s blues singer, plays as an overture: It registers as warm musical nostalgia, lacking dark grit and palpable pain.

	Carl Gordon, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Charles Dutton, Whoopi Goldberg and Stephen McKinley Henderson star in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." (Joan Marcus) Related article Next up for Wilson: Standup solo comedy

The singer is not Ma Rainey herself, but her present incarnation, Whoopi Goldberg, playing the title role in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," which opened Thursday on Broadway, 19 years after it alerted the theatrical world to Wilson's disturbing lyrical power.

When the long-delayed Ma finally appears at the 1927 Chicago recording studio where the white bosses and black musicians have been marking time, the apprehension of that initial song is confirmed. Not that Goldberg isn't a capable stage actor -- she was brilliant in her breakthrough Broadway one-woman show staged the same year "Ma Rainey" first appeared, and she was wise-guy cute and funny in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" a few years back.

But Ma isn't cute: She's a powerful, angry woman, a willful diva whose resentment comes from having to knuckle under to white bosses who exploit black artists and audiences -- and she can't even hail a cab. Goldberg's Ma lacks sizzle; she's too genteel by half. Goldberg underacts; she explains the role to us, she doesn't live it. Perhaps her visceral on-stage power has faded through years of TV and film.

Fortunately, Ma is not the star of her own play -- that role falls to Levee, the itchy, explosive trumpet player who's trying to break through with his own more up-to-date sound. Charles Dutton, who also made his Broadway breakthrough in 1984, playing this same role, is older and heavier now but with the same crackling fire and percussive articulation. He's a powerhouse.

Then there's the rest of Ma's band: the weary leader and trombonist Cutler; the philosophical pianist Toledo; and the cornpone bass player Slow Drag. Individually, they are very good. But I saw the play several days before most critics were admitted. There had been backstage discordance, and the admirable Carl Gordon, playing Cutler, was out several days with a medical emergency. The Cutler I saw was the fine understudy, Helmar Augustus Cooper, who seemed at home. But whatever the reason, the give-and-take among the men wasn't as true-to-the-bone as the play deserves.

By now, with Gordon back, it must be settling down. But obviously distractions have kept director Marion McClinton from the fine-tuning he would want.

And what about Levee? Wilson has made the point that a Levee in his mid-40s, as Dutton now seems, could harbor an extra desperation to offset the vibrant passion of the 30-ish Levee whom Dutton played in 1984. But as I match this revival against my mental tapes of 1984, it doesn't work that way. The cultural gap between Levee and the other musicians was greater then. Young Levee's sudden catastrophe was tragic -- it really hurt. Middle-aged, he doesn't stir the same sympathy.

Nonetheless, Dutton exudes electricity like an X-Man of acting. In the program, he calls this his "farewell performance in the theater: I have done the theater some service, and they know it. ... No more of that!" If true, this is reason enough to see this "Ma Rainey" during its limited run.

Everyone should know this play, which shocks with an accidental tragedy all the more painful for arising out of a naturalistic mix of good-natured banter, robust humor, existential debate, petty frustrations and horrific tales. Cutler's account of the Rev. Gates and Levee's of his mother's rape both curl the soul. In the only one of Wilson's plays to include three white characters, the daily humiliations dealt out to blacks are feelingly realized, without any lecture.

Having the starriest name play the supporting role of Ma works in this way, the unknowing audience waits as impatiently for her arrival as do the characters. (Oddly, Wilson once criticized the 1984 advertising for featuring a portrait of the original Ma, Theresa Merritt, specifically because it misled audiences this way.) We only gradually realize that the play's heart is the band room, the private space where no holds are barred.

Thomas Jefferson Byrd has a fastidious hauteur as Toledo, who understands the cultural trap they're in. The always reliable Stephen McKinley Henderson gives the warm Slow Drag a wary edge. Upstairs, Jack Davidson is perfectly plausible as Ma's duplicitous white manager, though old pro Louis Zorich is too grandfatherly and vague for the exploitative Sturdyvant.

As the object of Ma's affections, Heather Alicia Simms makes a juicy bit of Levee-bait. (But you may miss Ma's sexual possessiveness because Goldberg gives it such a ladylike spin.) Anthony Mackie's comic Sylvester never veers into caricature.

Mackie understudies Dutton, and Wilson says he's eager to see him play the role some day. Pittsburgh's Leland Gantt understudies Dutton, too. I wish them well, but it's Dutton you want to see. However at odds, he and Wilson remain a great pair.

At the Royale Theatre, 242 W. 45th St.; call 1-800-432-7250.