Blues in the Night is a fun-filled and sentimental delight!
Armelia McQueen, Amanda Folena and Debbie Decoudreaux (L to R) sing their hearts out in Blues in the Night!
Photos by Kevin Berne
The Center Repertory Company in Walnut Creek has just opened “Blues in the Night”, a delightful evening of heart, soul and blues music strikingly reminiscent of the classic female blues era (1920’s -1940’s) that brought us such great recording artists as Ma Rainey, Ida Mae Cox, Bessie Smith, Helen Humes and Billy Holiday. Blues in the Night first opened in the Rialto Theater on Broadway in 1982 and included in their cast of three very talented female performers, a young lady by the name of Leslie Uggams. The show was even nominated for the Tony best musical of the year award. After show ran very successfully on Broadway, it was moved first across “the pond” to a West End production house known as the Donmar Warehouse for a couple of months in 1987, until it moved to the more prestigious Piccadilly Theater in Westminster, England, later that year. It continued there until mid 1988 and was nominated for two Laurence Olivier Awards.
Sheldon Epps, the man who conceived this musical journey, has also created and orchestrated other musicals, bringing back the wonderful heart-felt and soulful sounds of this time period with productions such as the Count Basie musical, “Play On” which is remarkably similar to this production, in that it centers on the lives of three women and their laments of love gone wrong stories. In this production, we meet three women, each residing in their own apartments (the stage is divided into three minor sets, each one representing a room in their apertment), in which they each sing their songs reminding us of their romantic encounters gone wrong, of wasted and reckless lives, of love lost and dreams evaporated. First we meet a “Woman of the World” (played by Debbie de Coudreaux), who for all her wealth and opportunities, only found love intermittently. Her neighbor, a “Lady from the Road” (Armelia McQueen), is a traveler a bit further down the road of life than her counterparts. A third, a younger lady, “The Girl with a Date” (Amanda Folena), waits in vain for the phone to ring, expressing her heartache in touching musical memoirs, such as “Reckless Blues”, a song previously made famous by Bessie Smith. Joining the ladies on the stage is one male singer representative of all the ego-centered, underemployed and masculine disappointments they have had to deal with in their lives, “The Man in the Saloon”, played well C.R. Lewis. All actors in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, professionals with long resumes of highly successful performing endeavors.
All performers deliver outstanding performances for an evening that is over far too soon, that leaves you wanting more! Spinning song after song, each character shares little vignettes of their lives in various stages of joy and lament. We are treated to great songs such as Benny Goodman and Chick Webb’s famous “Stompin at the Savoy”, Duke Ellington’s “I’m Just a Lucky-So-and-So”, a Billie Holiday’s like rendition of Jimmy Davis’s poignant “Lover Man” and even an excellent Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Blues in the Night”, from which this musical takes its name. Sometimes they sing duets and sometimes they all join together in song!
The great bands of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, Charlie Green, Jack Teagarden and Bennie Goodman helped us shake away the blues of the great depression and ushered in the swing era and gave us something to sang and dance to. This musical is brought to life with a terrific band consisting of Brandon Adams on piano, Alan Close playing tenor sax and clarinet, alongside Mark Wright on trumpet, Joe McKinley on acoustic base and Mark Lee on drums. Even though it is predominantly a show about the power and poignancy of the “Blues” in our musical culture, it is upbeat with fun music such as Armelia McQueen’s delightfully funny “Take Me For a Buggy Ride”, Debbie De Coudreaux’s terrific fan dance interpretation of “Rough and Ready Man” and Amanda Folena’s heartfelt “Reckless Blues”. These entertainers are just that, terrific entertainers that will make you want to cry, laugh, clap your hands and dance before the evening’s over. This finely honed show is directed and choreographed by Robert Barry Fleming with the music directed by Brandon Adams.
"Blues in the Night" continues Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with matinees on Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 pm through Saturday, June 25th, in the Margaret Lesher Theater in the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts at 1601 Civic Drive in Walnut Creek. Tickets may be purchased at the LCA (Lesher Center for the Arts) box office or at the Barnes and Noble ticket desk in their store in downtown Walnut Creek and even in the Downtown Walnut Creek Library! If you wish to purchase over the internet, you can visit their online ticket link at CenterRep.org or call 943-SHOW (7469) for more information and reservations.
"Blues in the Night" continues Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with matinees on Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 pm through Saturday, June 25th, in the Margaret Lesher Theater in the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts at 1601 Civic Drive in Walnut Creek. Tickets may be purchased at the LCA (Lesher Center for the Arts) box office or at the Barnes and Noble ticket desk in their store in downtown Walnut Creek and even in the Downtown Walnut Creek Library! If you wish to purchase over the internet, you can visit their online ticket link at CenterRep.org or call 943-SHOW (7469) for more information and reservations.
This music brings back a lot of memories for me as both of my parents were professional entertainers in Las Vegas, Nevada, back when it was not much more than a watering hole and stop over for the Union Railroad, with a few little casinos on Main Street, catering to and entertaining the travelers passing through.
My mother’s singing career began and ended with bands in nightclubs in Las Vegas before I was born, so I don’t remember actually seeing her perform with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey (so I was told) on the Vegas strip. I have been told by friends of hers that she had a great local following before she retired (at age 24) to help my father in his struggling new insurance and real estate business in Las Vegas. I do vaguely remember my father performing and singing in the old Cinnabar Club and the old Eldorado Hotel dining room lounge on Main Street in Las Vegas in the late 40’s. My father, Rex Jarrett Sr., used his performing career as a springboard to launch his insurance business by selling auto and fire insurance to the barmaids, bartenders and patrons of the various clubs in which he worked. He played guitar and trombone with local bands and when he was in-between performance shifts (while waiting in the bar for other bands to finish up their gigs), he would often ask his friends, acquaintances and fellow performers if he could interest them in his insurance products.
My mother’s singing career began and ended with bands in nightclubs in Las Vegas before I was born, so I don’t remember actually seeing her perform with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey (so I was told) on the Vegas strip. I have been told by friends of hers that she had a great local following before she retired (at age 24) to help my father in his struggling new insurance and real estate business in Las Vegas. I do vaguely remember my father performing and singing in the old Cinnabar Club and the old Eldorado Hotel dining room lounge on Main Street in Las Vegas in the late 40’s. My father, Rex Jarrett Sr., used his performing career as a springboard to launch his insurance business by selling auto and fire insurance to the barmaids, bartenders and patrons of the various clubs in which he worked. He played guitar and trombone with local bands and when he was in-between performance shifts (while waiting in the bar for other bands to finish up their gigs), he would often ask his friends, acquaintances and fellow performers if he could interest them in his insurance products.
When I went to work for my father’s insurance office in the early 60’s, while I was working my way through college, he showed me an original “auto insurance application”, one of his first, that he kept just as a reminder as to how simple his insurance business start was. It consisted of nothing more than a customer’s name, address, age, phone number and the description of her car, scribbled down on a casino cocktail napkin. If you did that today, submitted a cocktail napkin to an insurance company with the applicant’s information on it, the company not only would not accept it, they would probably cancel your agency agreement out of concern as to what kind of business you were trying to drum up! Prospecting bar patrons for insurance clientele??? My father’s insurance agency went on to become, at one time (in the 50’s and 60’s), the 2nd largest insurance brokerage firm in the City of Las Vegas, as his office wrote most of the hotel business insurance in existence at that time in Las Vegas. Yes, those were very interesting days - - for all of us!