Perhaps it’s because I’ve just been reading Charles Dickens–The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit—that I took in Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s current Lackawanna Blues revival as stunningly Dickensian. Dealing, as it does, with a young boy brought up in near poverty who encounters any number of memorable characters, Santiago-Hudson’s early travels magically echo those of the prolific 19th-century author.
Moreover, Santiago-Hudson is acting in his own work. Over the course of his life Dickens, who considered himself an actor as well, gave numerous dramatic readings from his canon. So, considering the two as evoking similar milieus doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.
No need to summarize Dickens’s works—other than to mention poor boys like Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, who seem precursors to Santiago-Hudson’s Ruben, a child in a deprived Black community taken in by Rachel, a quietly confident pillar of her community.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Known to him and others as Nanny, she owns several houses in which all sorts of boarders pay rent or don’t when they’re hard up, houses to which all sorts of other abandoned souls or sometime grifters are drawn. They rely on Nanny to extract them from a variety of scrapes or to chide them toward obeisance, without, by the way, ever raising her voice.
As Santiago-Hudson’s characters press forward, they all become memorable, including one of the earliest unlikely charmers who’s full of malapropisms like the “Entire State Building.” Among others of persistent crowd the actor-author brings to pulsing life is womanizing Bill, who—not to stretch a point—behaves like a descendent of Dickens’s Bill Sykes. To another Lackawanna miscreant, Nanny says in her steely calm, no-nonsense way, “If you think you’re bad, try me.” No question she’s badder.
How does Santiago-Hudson bring the crowd from his Lackawanna, New York youth to the stage where set designer Michael Carnahan has placed an upstage brick wall broken by an ornate doorway and one sometime-lighted (by Jen Schriever) second-story window? He does it all by his brilliant self. A tall, handsome man, he’s a cargo of talents, not the least of which is his unbridled energy, not the least of which is his mastery of carefully captured accents and ways of expression, not the least of which is his harmonica playing that includes a tear-eliciting eulogy, not the least of which is his hilarious reference to the popular pomade, Dixie Peach.
At this indisputable tour de force he’s immeasurably helped by his director. That’s to say by himself. He keeps himself circling a center-stage stool as the characters express themselves in their carefully differentiated postures. That’s when he regularly returns to his recreation of Nanny Rachel’s signature stance—still, facing forward, eyes intent, hands firmly held below the waist. By the way, he returns as director in January when he takes on the revival of Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew.
Although Santiago-Hudson does all the talking, he’s not alone. Perched to his right on a second stool is renowned guitarist Junior Mack, providing what amounts to a soundtrack, original music by Bill Sims Jr. Once in a while, there’s an interlude during which Mack on guitar and Santiago-Hudson on harmonica play together. It’s transporting every time.
Unquestionably. Lackawanna Blues is a tribute to Nanny Rachel from the boy whom she turned into a man. Santiago-Hudson is declaring he wouldn’t be who he is today without the guidance she gave him directly or by example. And who he is today is a man of unbounded ability. As actor-writer, director, impersonator, harmonica player, he excels.
Is there anything wrong with this Lackawanna Blues? Nothing could be wrong with something this right, but the intermissionless 90-minuter does leave a spectator wanting more, more of the characters already presented and more of characters Santiago-Hudson hasn’t yet revisited. Please, sir, may I have some more?
N.B.: The playwright-actor transferred Lackawanna Blues to the screen in 2005, Directed with surpassing vivacity by George C. Wolfe, starring S. Epatha Merkerson, and now available on YouTube, it’s somewhat different from the stage play. I recommend it highly but with this aviso: See both. They complement each other. By no means should one substitute for the other.
Lackawanna Blues opened October 7, 2021, at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and runs through October 31. Tickets and information: manhattantheatreclub.com
