Reviewed by Odalys Nanin
Robey Theatre Company at the LATC
Through May 11
RECOMMENDED
Grant Gerrard’s realistic set wonderfully recreates Harlem’s legendary jazz club, Mikell’s (founded in 1969), and is enhanced by Vanessa Fernandez’s projections of musicians and singers who performed there (including Lena Horn, Earther Kitt, Whitney Houston, Miles David, and Ella Fitzgerald). This sets the production’s tone, but it also turns the bar into a character in and of itself.
The basis of Larry Muhammad’s play is the return from Paris to New York of one of the most famous Black writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin, brilliantly played by Julio Hanson, who embodies this character by imitating Baldwin’s voice and mannerism to perfection. He is met at the Jazz bar by another great poet/writer, Maya Angelou (Raquel Rosser). The famous jazz musician Miles Davis is played by Nick Gillie with an enthralling raspy voice and musical talent.
Everyone expects a party on arriving only to be told by the bartender David Baldwin (James Baldwin’s brother), believably played by James T. Lawson II, that the jazz bar is going under. How is this even possible they all ask? Bad handling of money or crushing rent increases caused by gentrification? That nasty “G” word the creeps into neighborhoods pushing out their low- income tenants. Muhammad’s play focuses on how James Baldwin is writing himself into bad health. We learn that he has suffered two heart attacks, yet he never gives up his writing no matter how weak he may feel. Maya Angelou’s advice that he try to get some rest falls into deaf ears because Baldwin feels inspired to write an elegy to his beloved old joint.
This play transports us to a bygone era. Yet in the present state of affairs, the end for James Baldwin is near. I could not help but feel that his elegy to Mikell’s bar is an elegy to himself. The writing is witty, the acting on cue, while the vision soars to life under the masterly direction of Ben Guillory.
Mikell’s theme song is composed by Maurice Gainen. The trumpet played by the character of Miles Davis is effectively recorded to sound by trumpeter/sound engineer Nolan Shaheed, and the illuminations of light and shadows are magically created by Benedict Coran.
The Robey Theatre Company, The Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown LA. Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; thru May 11. https://www.therobeytheatrecompany.org/
