Like a shot of adrenalin, Blues in the Night gave me a real pick-me-up, a feeling of joy, hope, and delight. The two-hour tour through the jazz and blues songs of the 1920s and 30s, was first seen two decades ago at the Pasadena Playhouse when it was under the leadership of Sheldon Epps. Epps, who conceived and directed the show (which later won acclaim on Broadway and the West End), has revived it at The Wallis, with equally successful results. It wouldn’t surprise me if the revue ended up on Broadway again. Blues in the Night is all about love, the getting and losing, yearning and chasing of it. The view of it is from an African-American vantage point: all four of the singers in the show are black, and many of the songs they sing were first introduced or written by the likes of Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Billy Strayhorn, Alberta Hunter, and Duke Ellington. When you add to the mix such famed white composers as Benny Goodman, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, and John LaTouche, you’ve got a score to remember. This bookless musical tells its story strictly through songs, which Epps has organized in an organic way, giving them a through-line which, roughly, takes the audience on a trip up from the gritty days of the 20s to the more militant days of the 30s. The setting is a “cheap hotel” in Chicago (evocative design by John Iacovelli; equally effective lighting by Jared A. Sayeg), where the three female singers live (Yvette Cason, Bryce Charles, Paulette Ivory). Hanging around them—and strutting his male stuff—is the singer from the hotel bar, Chester Gregory. “The lady from the road” (Cason) is a once-famous blues singer now down on her luck; “The woman of the world” (Ivory) is a faded beauty still thinking love will save her life; “The girl with the date” (Charles) is the youngest and prettiest, dying to take a chance on love (one of her songs, of course). The four singers, each terrific in his or her own way, are backed up by a red-hot quintet of jazz musicians led by pianist Lanny Hartley. With vocal arrangements by Chapman Roberts and orchestrations by Sy Johnson, Blues in the Night cooks like mad from beginning to end. As director Epps said in a program note, the revue has always been about female empowerment. “Many people think the blues is about lying down and complaining about how badly you feel, but it’s really about survival and fighting back.” The fight is reflected in songs like Ida Cox’s “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues” and Harold Arlen’s defiant “I Got a Right to Sing the Blues,” but especially in such in-your-face and bawdy tunes as “Rough and Ready Man” and “Take Me For a Buggy Ride.” The appeal of the songs in Blues was perhaps best expressed by the legendary B.B. King, who said, “Everyone can relate to the simplicity and honesty of the blues. There’s nothing like it.”
