August Wilson’s 1982 play “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” – one of the ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle by Wilson – uses the historical figure of Ma Rainey, famed blues singer, to explore issues of black pain, and black art. Set in 1920s Chicago, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is a foreboding account of what happens when old clashes with the new.
‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ is the song at the centre of the clash. It’s one of the key works of the singer, but early on the story recognises an issue. Ma likes to sing her song the old way. But the young, talented upstart trumpeter in her band, Levee, has written a new arrangement of it for a new era of audiences. The White studio owner is intrigued. The rest of the band members are less enthused. Ma won’t like it, they warn. And she does not. Ma Rainey is a member of the Old Guard. Queen of the blues, tired and exhausted by the sea of whiteness that she finds her stardom shackled to, she is a woman who looks out at the world with bitterness. Music gives her some happiness, as does a relationship with a young woman, Dussie Mae. It’s not clear where the musical allegiances of the band lie. Except for Levee. He wants something different. He’s bursting at the seams to show the world. Inevitably the old will clash with the new, even if not in the way you expect. The play, like the new adaptation directed by George C Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is about that schism that becomes extemporised in the way of the title song. Whose music can sustain, though?
The adaptation of the play as produced by Denzel Washington is part of a vital project of his, adapting the ten-cycle to the big screen. August Wilson is THE black American playwright with a body of work that compares with other 20th century American playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill. Even though he arrives decades later, his work retains that operatic theatricality that marked the early half of the 20th century, when American drama came to define the new kind of theatrical work, except Wilson’s focus on black characters made his work even more singular. His focus on black characters, who are dramatic heroes with stories of mythical proportions, make him unrivalled on the stage. Yet, where adaptations of O’Neill, Williams and Miller have littered screens – big and small – Wilson’s work has not achieved that accessibility. Not in print. Not in revivals. And not in media.
Washington’s commitment to bringing the ten cycle to the big screen is noble. Before the last decade, when he began his production cycle with “Fences”, Alfre Woodard’s astonishing turn in the 1990’s TV-movie “The Piano Lesson” was the most accessible adaptation of Wilson’s work. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” arrives at the right time, at a watershed moment for black art.
But in adapting the work to screen, the Hollywood commitments of “Ma Rainey” seem to shackle the pain of Wilson’s own complicated work. And the project feels duty bound. It arrives all too aware of its own significance, carrying the weight of what it means for Viola Davis – the most notable black female star of her era – to communicate the harsh decisiveness of Ma Rainey. It’s bound to the recent death of Chadwick Boseman, whose performance as Levee adds a note of tragedy to the character’s fate. And it’s bound by Wolfe, a talent of the stage whose screen directing has been less acclaimed than his prolific stage work. It’s a lot of weight for a play that’s already weighed down by its own pain and as a film, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” feels like a play that is weighed down rather than a film that unfolds naturally.
There’s a limber quality a Wilson adaptation needs if transferred to a new medium. Wilson’s work is theatrical in the way that Tennessee Williams’ own grandiosity is theatrical to the core. Good adaptations of Williams’ work soar because they understand how to transpose that theatricality to the screen, which works differently than the stage. But here the seams of the theatre keep showing at every turn, so on film “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” rarely feels free. Not in the way Viola Davis’s Ma Rainey seems too studied in her opacity – not a sign of Wilson’s own sly handling of her on the page – but victims of the film’s own literalisation of her pain at the expense of subtext. As a character, Ma Rainey plays to sensibilities in Davis’ oeuvre that seem out of place – one could imagine her as a thrilling Berenice in an adaptation of “The Piano Lesson”, but as Ma Rainey she seems too keyed into the projections and not the central complications of the role. Ma is bitter, and resentful and a bully. Davis gets that, but it’s a stolidness that is centred by her surety of her music. And that’s something the film hedges on, and that Davis performance flounders with.
Davis valiantly works out the heavy, bullishness of Ma but beneath the surly lips, the garishly effective makeup and her tired flounce, little in the performance or Wolfe’s direction seems to know why Ma is even doing what she does. Ma Rainey is central, even if her screen-time is not the most – but here she feels like an obscure storm rather than a knowable force to be reckoned with.
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is a heavy play. It is not the heaviest of Wilson’s cycle, but it is unrelenting in the way that its ending gives us no catharsis. Everything is so tightly wound; even the hints of levity sustain themselves on undercurrents of desperation. Wolfe’s direction leaves the actors carrying that weight, and it’s too much to carry. The film is aesthetically and tonally flat, with a glossy sheen of browness which is the worst thing for the kind of pulsating crescendo that informs Wilson’s drama. The story is hurtling towards that devastating coda – when the levee that is Levee unleashes for the worse – but there’s no nuance in the filmmaking here. What happens when the levee inside us breaks? Chaos. And in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, we spend the entire narrative waiting for that levee to break. Literally. But, on film, Wolfe’s work feels too effortful for the unbridled chaos the story demands. The colour of the chaos is compromised.
Levee is the true protagonist of the story. The film, like the play, turns on his character development. His first major monologue, a harrowing memory, shifts the context of the play and is one of Wilson’s most memorable. The second shift is a stand-off between Ma and the band and the final turn returns us to Levee, now in desperation. The adaptation retains the clear-cut structure. But there’s a jarring oddity to the filmmaking when each pivotal turning point is framed with the same kind of boxed in camera work. This story is about people and their bodies, the ways they externalise that grief and pain and anger of living in the shadow of whiteness. And, yet, Wolfe privileges close-ups. His instincts seem out of sync. For a film about performers, the camera seems unwilling to let us see them in proximity to each other. A scene of eroticism between Ma and Dussie Mae feels stolid and perfunctory. No joy, only a stolid brown dunness. Yes, the story is moving towards that final operatic tragedy but we are not marking time until then. The story needs to live and breathe and feel. It’s the blues isn’t it?
On stage, Wilson’s work retains an operatic force – it’s big, and expressionistic and impactful. But on screen, everything feels small in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”. I wondered if those coming to the story for the first time would understand the significance in this version. A story of rape retains the same cadence as a potentially joyful memory of what the blues can do. When the music begins to play, the actors try sell the enthusiasm but the filmmaking itself doesn’t feel like it’s tapping out keys or feeling rhythm. It’s dutiful and earnest but it’s not lively. Boseman injects Levee’s hurt and pain with gusto, even when the direction traps him – sometimes literally, like in a scene where his psychological entrapment is represented by a brick wall.
It’s an awkward sensation because blues music is unbound by duty. It can be chaotic. It can be unpredictable. It can be desperate and it can even be unhinged. But the blues cannot be a duty, and so many of the parts of “Ma Rainey” seem to pulsate through with its awareness of that duty. It’s Colman Domingo, ever watchful as the de facto bandleader Cutler, and Glynn Turman, as the tired but hopeful old-hand Toledo, that hold the key to the film’s engagement with the blues. They inhabit the tiredness of their existence without announcement. Wolfe insists on opening up the play, literalising Ma’s pain and her heartache but the moments with Domingo and Turman have a naturalness that does not need to be emphasised. They just are. The real, mournful blues in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” come in the brief moments the film allows them to just exist.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is available for streaming on Netflix.
