Angel Allen is drunk and being helped home by her good friend Guy(Giles Terera), a gay costume designer, and a kindly stranger in Pearl Cleage’s Blues For An Alabama Sky, a play about hopes and dreams set in 1930s Harlem, a place of a thousand night clubs and just as many speakeasies selling bathtub gin, writes Michael Holland.
Angel has been drinking to hide the pain of her ‘gangster boyfriend’ who got married but still decided to celebrate at a stage-side table in the club where she sang and danced. Angel showed her feelings on the matter by stepping out of the chorus line to berate her former beau in the middle of a song and dance number. Ms Allen was promptly fired and also lost the apartment her ex let her use while he still wanted her around. Not a good night for Angel, left to drown her sorrows and cry about her dreams shattered.
Guy says she can share his apartment, an offer she snaps up because she knows Guy will look after her and expect nothing in return. In fact, Guy has his own dreams of happiness that include Josephine Baker calling him over to Paris to design costumes for her stage shows – and he’s going to take Angel with him! On hearing this she straightaway plans to find and marry a wealthy old French man there ‘who dies immediately!’
Delia Patterson(Ronk? Adékolu?jo) is the young, simple-living, church-going neighbour who dreams of opening a birth control clinic in the neighbourhood, and Sam(Sule Rimi) is the reprobate twice her age who spends his nights clubbing and his days working as a doctor, plus, dreaming of being with Delia. While enjoying life, however, Sam is also a good man. These make up the quartet of friends.
Blues For An Alabama Sky is about the dreams people have and whether they hold on to them or give up on them. More succinctly, it is about the dreams black people have. Dreams and hopes ruined through exploitation by their own people just as much as they are held back by racism. It is also about the lengths friends will go to help.
There are no white people in Cleage’s masterpiece, but they are always there. They are there in the police sirens, there in the conversations about fighting back, because this was a time of protest and marches and people trying to make changes.
Frankie Bradshaw’s set looks right into the big house they share with others that we see but who take no part in the story other than looking like they are good neighbours.
The plot trajectories are whether Sam and Delia get together, and will Guy and Angel go off to Paris.
While looking out of the window and feeling sorry for herself, Angel sees a stranger walk by and they strike up a conversation. It is Leland (Osy Ikhile), the good Samaritan from the night before, back to check that she is okay. Now manless, Angel agrees to go for a walk with the God-fearing Southern man from Alabama who is still in love with the wife that died while giving birth to a boy who also did not survive. His dream is to find a replacement. His arrival cuts right through Angel and Guy’s friendship.
As their relationship warms, his proposal of marriage offers a security long since vanished from Angel’s showgirl life; but what about Paris and Josephine Baker?
Lynette Linton’s direction brings out tremendous performances from everyone. Samira Wiley shows Angel’s waif-like vulnerability beneath a tough external façade, but it is Terera as the flamboyant Guy who is the one to watch.
National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 until November 5th. Times: Mon-Sat 7.30pm; Wed & Sat matinees 2.30pm. Admission: £20 – £89.
Booking: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
Photos by Marc Brenner.
