August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” returns to Yale Rep 40 years after its world premier there

Tim Douglas, who actually understudied in Yale Rep’s world premiere of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in 1984, returns to New Haven this month to direct the fictionalized dramatization of the iconic blues singer’s studio session. He does so with "a raw and razor-sharp depiction of Black artists’ struggles to exist, create, and thrive," just as the drama's press release promises.

Worth noting: this production earns Douglas the rare distinction of having directed each play in Wilson’s epic American Century Cycle - a collection of ten landmark plays that chronicle the African American experience across each decade of the 20th century.

Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, the two-act drama tells the story - in real time - of a recording session with blues legend Ma Rainey, her band members, and the white producer and agent who made themselves wealthy through Rainey’s recordings.

While Ma, at first depicted as a diva, seems to be taking her sweet time arriving to the studio, three members of her back-up quartet prepare to rehearse while waiting for Levee - their trumpeter - to arrive. They chat, Toledo (Dion Graham) gently philosophizing about the meaning of life and music with Cutler (Terence Archie) while Slow Drag (Ray Anthony Thomas), grumbles about the tardy musician. The trio banters back and forth the way jazz musicians might share measured solos - that is until Levee (Jimmie J. J. Jeter) enters and abruptly upstages their easy exchange, boasting about his talents and the snazzy shoes he just purchased with the $4 he won from Slow Drag the previous night.

Planted at center stage for most of the play, Toledo on piano, Cutler on trombone, and Slow Drag on upright bass, anchor the drama through the storms that rush by. Ma's nervous and bumbling agent Irvin (Jeff Parker) periodically breezes in and out of the studio, as does an unctous record producer Sturdyvant (Neal Lerner), when they are not sequestered behind the glass of a very high second level office, symbolically looking down at the makers of the music enveloped in a staged haze below. (The physical hierarchy is the work of scenic designer Richard Lee and lighting designer Amanda Burness).

Ma Rainey ((Maiesha McQueen) finally bursts into the studio halfway through Act One like a storm at sea. A flustered policeman (Peter Bisgaier) adds to the chaotic entrance, falsely blaming Ma for an altercation with a cab driver. The tailwinds of her entourage follow behind, including her nonchalant paramour Dussie Mae ( Brittany Antoinette Davis ) and Ma's young nephew Sylesvester (Mark Yarde) who is afflicted with a persistent stutter. Yarde captures the audience's heart with his execution of the speech defect in Act Two.

Thus, the scene is finally set for a recording session in Act Two, but not until the stage darkens and the up-to-now cocky Levee illuminates under a sole spotlight the brewing tempest of childhood trauma that stirs within him, in an emotional soliloquy that closes Act One. This will not be the only time Jeter wraps sorrow, dismay, frustration, and anger in an emotionally poignant and exhausting speech that manifests why Wilson's playwriting has earned him the title of "America's Shakespeare."

After a number of starts and stops in Act Two McQueen at last belts out the raucous rendition of "Black Bottom" the audience has been waiting for, recreating all the jazz and pizazz packed into Rainey's signature song back in the day. And because the producer missed getting the track the first time, she gets to knock it out again. A double treat for the audience.

Yet as exhilarating as it is to witness a group of three virtually unknown veteran musicians, and an ambitious young trumpeter attempt to immortalize their music, the guts of the drama exposes the emotional and economic exploitation faced by Black artists in America. The electrifying play is an exploration of dreams deferred, cultural identity, and the power of the blues, now with a striking vision from Timothy Douglas, one of the great interpreters of Wilson’s work who has been involved with it since its inception.

The Yale Repertory Theatre production of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” runs through October 24 at the Yale University Theater, 222 York St., New Haven. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. $20-$65. yalerep.org. Recommended to be viewed by fourteen-year-olds and older .