At the end of Paradise Blue—the final play in Dominique Morisseau’s “Detroit Project” to receive its New York premiere—I couldn’t help but feel a bit, well, blue.
Not by Paradise Blue, which is receiving a gorgeous, evocative production at Off Broadway’s Signature Theatre. But by the fact that there are only three Detroit plays: Paradise Blue, set in 1949 in the long-vanished Black Bottom neighborhood; Detroit ’67, which places a brother, sister, and their big dreams in the midst of the 1967 riots; and the masterful Skeleton Crew, a Great Recession–era peek into an endangered automotive stamping plant. Call me greedy, but I’d like Morisseau to expand her Project.
In Black Bottom’s business and entertainment hub, Paradise Valley, sits the play’s Paradise Club, owned by temperamental trumpeter Blue (J. Alphonse Nicholson, in a dishearteningly one-note performance). He may be Paradise’s proprietor, but its heart is naive but charming Pumpkin (a sweetly beguiling Kristolyn Lloyd, fresh from Dear Evan Hansen), who keeps the meals hot, the sheets starched, and the musicians—pianist Corn (August Wilson vet Keith Randolph Smith) and percussionist Sam (Francois Battiste, who starred in Detroit ’67 at the Public Theater in 2013), aka P-Sam—happy. She also tries, without much success, to keep the demons out of Blue’s head. Blue’s trouble is two-fold and monumental: He can’t find “that perfect note,” and he can’t shake the ghost of his dead father.
Between Blue’s mood swings and his constant conflicts with P-Sam, Paradise Club isn’t quite living up to its name. And Paradise Valley is about to lose its luster: The strip of clubs that played host to such artists as Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong—Neil Patel’s set, papered with concert posters for these and other greats, is a history lesson in itself—is about to fall victim to Mayor Cobo’s grand “urban renewal” plan. But rather than get too bogged down with historical facts, Morisseau brings chaos into the club via character: in the shapely form of Silver (Simone Missick), an enigmatic woman with what the author calls a “meeeeaaaannnn walk.”
Morisseau frequently draws August Wilson comparisons—and those are fair, to a degree, considering his Pittsburgh cycle. Yet with the sudden arrival of an out-of-towner, the traveler’s shadowy past, and a mentally unsound hero, Paradise Blue feels almost Tennessee Williams–like. Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who also helmed Skeleton Crew at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2016 (and the Signature’s sublime 2012 revival of The Piano Lesson), beautifully blends the play’s moodier, more fanciful moments—for instance, the tortuous world in Blue’s mind—with simple, chatty scenes (e.g., Pumpkin reciting the words of Harlem Renaissance poet Georgia Douglas Johnson).
Perhaps the best compliment I can give Paradise Blue: It sent me into a day-long Google spiral searching for clues about Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, which were pretty much leveled in the early 1950s. And it’s not only the area that was destroyed; it’s also the history. No one in my family had heard of either location, and we all grew up about eight to 10 miles outside Detroit. I also learned this, per Crain’s Detroit Business: In mid-2016, a group of developers unveiled plans for a $52.4 million Paradise Valley Cultural and Entertainment District. One of the proposed venues? The Paradise Valley Jazz Club. Seems like that would be a perfect place for a production of Paradise Blue.
Paradise Blue opened May 14, 2018, and runs through June 10. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
