June 2010 Theatre Review by Lawrence Bommer
Low Down Dirty Blues
In a mere 80 minutes and 22 songs, Randal Myler’s superb quartet, depicting veteran blues performers entertaining each other after their bar has closed, explores the color-blind blues with contagious conviction. Confessions about why and how they sing the blues provide the necessary context for some fairly unfamiliar and totally convincing ballads from the Mississippi delta and Chicago’s stoops. It’s a rich texture and it all comes from performers too real to be confused with characters.
Sandra Reaves-Phillips incarnates the once and future “big mama” as she belts out such salacious numbers as “Don’t’ Jump My Pony” and “My Handyman” or breaks every heart in the house with her impassioned “Lord, I Tried.” In contrast, the irrepressible Felicia Fields lurches from complaints about too much love to too little loyalty as she gets her mojo working in “Not That Kind of Girl.” She also interacts with lucky audience members in the first row. Tearing up the stage with “Shake Your Money Maker” or lamenting hard times with “Born Under a Bad Sign,” Gregory Porter puts life into art in every song. Finally, Mississippi Charles Bevel, a Blues legend who’s happily also alive, brings hard won experience and survival wisdom to “Grapes of Wrath.”
Between the marvelous music we glimpse the pain behind the notes as Fields’ singer regrets that, even after moving North, she’s “still on the plantation” as their work gets stolen and their recordings lack royalties. It doesn’t help that contemporary audiences have forgotten the blues’ pioneers and think it all began with the Blues Brothers. It didn’t and “Low Down Dirty Blues” proves why every wonderful chance it can. "Low Down Dirty Blues" runs through July 3, 2010 at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie. Call 847.673.6300, or visit northlight.org.
About Lawrence Bommer
A
native Chicagoan, Lawrence Bommer has been an active free-lance
writer and playwright since 1975. For twenty years he wrote a
weekly column, "Opening Nights" for the Friday section of
the Chicago Tribune, where he also regularly contributed theater
criticism and feature writing. His work has appeared in
Stagebill, the Pulitzer-Lerner newspapers and The Advocate.
Mr. Bommer was theater editor for the Windy City Times since its founding until 1999; from 1986 a theater critic for the Chicago Reader (where he has also written for the "Calendar" and "Our Town" sections); Chicago Free Press, where he was contributing editor until the paper’s demise in spring 2010; Chicago Footlights, where he has been a regular contributor; and Plays International, where he is the Chicago correspondent. He has also contributed to the Hollywood Reporter, PerformInk, Screen Magazine, CitySearch, the Chicago Illini, Inside Chicago, Illinois Entertainer, the International Theatre Festival of Chicago newsletter, Plays International, CitySearch, Playbill Online, TheatreMania, CurtainUp.com and Chicago Enterprise. Mr. Bommer is a three-time finalist for a Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism in the "arts criticism" category. In 1991 he became a regular theater and, dance critic and arts writer for the Chicago Tribune. His commentary has also aired on LesBiGay Radio, WGN and on Milwaukee Public Radio.
As a playwright, Mr. Bommer's work has been produced in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Madison and, in Chicago, by the Organic Theater Company (Jonathan Wild [1979], Poe [1980]. Gulliver's Last Travels [1993] and by Lionheart Gay Theatre (Gunsel, The Tyrannicides, Killers and Comrades). Since 1976 Mr. Bommer has taught at the Francis W. Parker School and was a lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1969 to 1975 (where he received his Master's degree in English), as well as a guest lecturer at the College of DuPage, Roosevelt University, DePaul University and the University of Chicago. Mr. Bommer is a member of the American Theater Critics Association and has been a member of the National Writers Union and the Dramatists Guild.