A fine cast backed by a first-rate jazz combo make Porchlight Music Theatre’s revival of Sheldon Epps’s concept revue Blues in the Night a delicious musical feast. A 1982 Broadway vehicle for Leslie Uggams, this durable jukebox musical—smartly staged for Porchlight by Chicago theater veteran Kenny Ingram—anthologizes a rich trove of 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s standards from the Great American Songbook. A slim narrative focuses on three women in a hotel in 1938 Chicago: the naive Girl with a Date (Clare Kennedy), the more experienced Woman of the World (Donica Lynn), and the worldly-wise Lady from the Road (Felicia P. Fields), a veteran of vaudeville’s infamous Theatre Owners Booking Association—TOBA—whose exploitation of performers of color earned it the alternate name Tough On Black Asses.
Blues in the Night
Through 3/13: Thu 7 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 PM, Sun 2 PM; Thu 2/17, 1:30 PM only, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 773-777-9884, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $59-$74 ($25 rush, $20 students pending availability).
Individually and in harmony, the ladies—joined by a slick saloon singer (Evan Tyrone Martin) and a dancing gigolo (Terrell Armstrong)—tag-team their way through a marvelous collection of classic blues and jazz tunes by the likes of Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Ida Cox, Jimmy Cox, Mack Gordon, and Vernon Duke. It’s a real treat to hear these smart, complex, emotive, image-packed songs delivered with style and intelligence to the crisp accompaniment of an onstage band led by the superb pianist Maulty Jewell IV. Highlights include Lynn and Martin in an artful pairing of Billy Strayhorn’s melancholy masterpiece “Lush Life” and the cocksure, exuberant “I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So,” by Strayhorn’s mentor Duke Ellington; Kennedy wailing Ann Ronell’s “Willow Weep for Me” as she juggles a whiskey flask and a Gideon Bible; Fields wielding a riding crop as she growls her way through the galloping double entendres of Bessie Smith’s “Take Me for a Buggy Ride”; and a beautiful group arrangement of the great song that gives the show its title, Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Blues in the Night.”
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