Blues For An Alabama Sky At The Shaw Festival
With Blues For An Alabama Sky, now at the intimate Jackie Maxwell Studio, the Shaw Festival continues its run of solid revivals of the African-American theatrical canon.
This 1995 melodrama by Pearl Cleage may not have the heft of The Amen Corner (2023) or Gem of the Ocean (2022), but thanks to the direction of Kimberley Rampersad and a terrific cast it makes for an interesting evening in the theatre.
Set in New York’s Harlem in 1930 when Prohibition and the Great Depression were in full bloom, Blues For An Alabama Sky follows the travails of a close-knit group of friends who live in the kind of New York apartment you see in sitcoms – you know, the ones where no one locks their doors. They exist in the midst and on the fringes of the Harlem Renaissance. Well-known figures of the era, like Langston Hughes, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and Josephine Baker are name checked throughout.
Angel Allen (Virgilia Griffith) is a hard-luck chantoosie at speakeasies and frequent plaything of Italian gangsters. She lives with Guy Jacobs (Stewart Adam McKensy) an openly gay costume designer who spent time as a rent boy while finding his footing in the big city and now dreams of going to Paris to design costumes for “Miss Josephine.”
Down the hall lives Delia Patterson (Mary Antonini) an earnest 25-year-old acolyte of Margaret Sanger campaigning to establish a family planning clinic in Harlem. She is courted by the older Sam Thomas (Allan Louis), the local doctor who is not above providing abortion services.
Into this milieu comes Leland Cunningham (JJ Gerber), “a God-fearing Christian man” from Alabama, who falls instantly in love with Angel and is determined to make her his wife. It doesn’t turn out well.
Blues For An Alabama Sky touches on hot button topics like abortion, racism, homophobia, and religious conservatism and yet manages to seem oddly old-fashioned for a play of its era, a bit like a formulaic made for TV movie. Indeed Cleage honours Chekhov’s dictum that a gun brandished about in Act One must be fired in Act Two.
I had my quibbles. I never quite bought the character of Leland, who seemed far too dapper to be a carpenter (shades of Jesus!) from Tuscaloosa. His homophobia matched his ardently professed religiosity, which didn’t seem to prevent him from impregnating Angel. Perhaps Cleage’s point is that, like so many of his ilk, Leland is an arch hypocrite.
Still, I had nothing but admiration for Cleage’s ability to write great dialog and create vivid human beings in her other characters and director Rampersad’s skill in helping an admirable cast bring them to life.
Griffith, in an impressive Shaw debut, shows Angel’s brittle edges and inner demons. Antonini is vivacious as the crusading Delia and Louis is charming as her older suitor. McKensy nearly steals the show as Guy Jacobs, the flamboyant designer whose show biz dreams come true.
Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart manages to evoke a crowded Harlem apartment building with the A Train rumbling below on the Studio’s tiny stage and she has costumed its inhabitant’s with a keen eye to period style. Lighting by Chris Malkowski keeps pace and the sound design by Miquelon Rodriguez provides a delightful soundtrack of period standards and rumbling subways.
Blues For An Alabama Sky may not be the greatest African-American play the Shaw Festival has showcased but it provides a solid evening’s entertainment – just like a good made for TV movie.
Blues For An Alabama Sky continues at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre through October 4, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Shaw Festival website.
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