Review: August Wilson's 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' at A Noise Within presents acting of the highest caliber

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Set us as preferred August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” the first of his plays to reach Broadway, catapulted the author’s playwriting career.It’s the only drama in Wilson’s 10-play American Century Cycle not set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.But the series might never have come to fruition were it not for the way “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” heralded the emergence of a major new American dramatist.Although it’s still one of his most produced works, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” has the hallmarks of an early piece.

Wilson discovers his playwriting voice in this play, but he’s still working out his approach to dramatic structure.I wasn’t champing at the bit to see another production of “Ma Rainey’s,” but I’m glad I didn’t miss this latest Wilson revival at A Noise Within, directed by Gregg T.Daniel.

Acted with breathtaking ensemble naturalness, the play seems lived in rather than performed.The voices of the characters come through as though we’re eavesdropping from a discreet distance on their banter and squabbles.There’s nothing more riveting on stage than the truth, and here we have human beings in all their flagrant, unadorned and seemingly irreconcilable complications.Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, the play splits its focus between the title character, a fictitious re-creation of the great blues singer Ma Rainey engaged in a power struggle with her white industry overlords, and the exchanges of her sidemen, a quartet of Black men with markedly different ambitions and sensibilities.Levee, the role magnificently played by Chadwick Boseman in George C.

Wolfe‘s 2020 film adaptation, may have more of a claim on the protagonist role than even Ma Rainey, who’s the play’s thematic center.As she throws her diva weight around in defense of a talent born out of Bla...