The Milwaukee Rep's Stackner Cabaret season continues with Sheldon Epps' Blues In The Night. It's a tribute to jazzy kind of early 30s blues. There's plenty of Bessie Smith here. The title song makes appearances in Act Two. There's also work by the likes of Jimmy Cox, Harold Arlen, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.
It's a cabaret show with the passionate heart of a classy kind of concert. The blues breathes out of cool shadow and cooler light. The music makes it dark fusion with the moment that is stylistically elegant without being overly polished. The show shuns an overall running narrative in favor of stylishly rendering mood. Epps allows the early era of blues to assert itself directly through the music, which is welcome alternative to forcing he music into an overarching narrative.
Mood and movement pulse through four major archetypes. The Lady, the Woman, the Girl and the Man. These are the four vocalists. They accompanied by a couple of guys playing multiple instruments in the background. The four of them are the center of it. And they draw themselves into it quite well.
Zonya Love plays The Lady--power vocals with clever comic instincts. She also erupts with some deeper moments of overwhelming soul. She's at her most impressive, however, when she's deftly moving through subtle shades of comedy that filter through the music. Her performance of Take Me For a Buggy Ride is one of the most pleasantly memorable moments on the evening.
Lili Thomas plays The Woman--sultry vocals and trumpet. She plays to the sexiest side of the music. Her Stompin' At The Savoy moves with the sultry sensuality that the song rarely has. She also plays trumpet. Her ability to move in and out of vocals and trumpet has a kind of silent grace about it. She never seems to break character from one phase to the next. Trumpet might not traditionally fit in with the kind of archetype she's playing here but she makes it work.
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Halle Morse plays The Girl--she's young percussion with washboard and drumsticks. Her voice strikes a definite contrast against the rest of it . . . a really unique and distinctive tonal quality to it that feels like one of the only truly novel bits about the production. Everyone else here gets big applause for overwhelming in one way or another, but Morse's vocals are brilliantly more intricate than much of the rest of what's going on here. There's a kind of acrobatic high wire contortion about her vocals that is a lot of fun to listen to. She's got attitude to match the voice as well . . . small, lithe and agile, her character is possibly most interesting in her rendition of Bessie Smith's Baby Doll.
Towering Carl Clemons-Hopkins is The Man here-- a blues giant anchored to the stage with a deep voice. He plays to the aggressive end of the era's blues in a way that feels powerfully iconic.
The staging of the classic music is diffused competently throughout the ensemble ,but there are a few moments where things get a bit muddled. Singers share songs they probably shouldn't. This is not to say that any of the harmony is off . . . it just doesn't feel right for some songs to be done in duet. And while this is largely a matter of personal taste, there are certain songs that definitely suffer from more than one voice at once. There's a mournful loneliness in When Your Lover Has Gone that simply doesn't sound right as anything other than a solo. Though the staging falters in such moments, this is a stylish show that's fun enough to overcome its flaws.
The Milwaukee Rep's production of Blues In The Night runs through December 23rd at the Stackner Cabaret. For ticket reservations, call 414-224-9490.
