Jannie Jones returns to a role she created in a triumphant emotional and musical expansion of her acclaimed early performance as Ethel Waters at Florida Studio Theater. Happily, Larry Parr’s biographical monologue still uses just the right songs to illuminate Waters’s life. Jannie does them more than justice, showing why she’s so frequently invited to perform at FST, but this time she displays exceptional acting chops as well. Because the play’s a monologue, director Kate Alexander uses every technical element to keep the sometimes repetitious flashback from Waters’s late life to her pre-teen revelations from being monotonous. She’s made Jim Prosser more than a piano accompanist. He’s an on-stage essential to a played-through drama that unites Waters’ recollections through speech and music. Alexander has ordered for Jannie’s Ethel clever on-stage changes of dress to mark her age or changes in her personal or career life. In a set of such mixed elements as platforms, signs, curved side upswept drapes (that transform into projected portraits), and an armchair, Ethel can stand, sit, and sweep through environments forced on or chosen by her. Both sound and light systems work well in every case. Ethel Waters’s story doesn’t tell of an easy life, beginning as a child of a teen-age rape victim and escaping being one. In a rare period in a Catholic school she found a good nun’s solicitude. Waters didn’t escape the trap of a teen marriage, though, and suffered spousal abuse. ln the loss of her loved grandmother, she found her “crystal voice” singing of God’s providence (“His Eye Is on the Sparrow”). Virtually abandoned by mother and sister, she got up the strength to leave marriage (“I Don’t Dig You, Jack”). On her tough way to a career, she got a job as an understudy singing (“Sweet Georgia Brown”), had an auto accident that nearly maimed her for life but got her to a Harlem gig (“This Joint Is Jumpin’”). She then went “from a low class dump to a high class dump”. There she was helped to challenge racism by her idol Sophie Tucker and “Ol Man Harlem.” Nevertheless, the challenge continued in other ways for years. Act II has Jannie's Ethel performing at The Cotton Club (“Dinah”) but she didn’t feel white audiences appreciated her enough. She did find a good guy and they began “Taking a Chance on Love”—but work claimed her more than married life (“Am I Blue?”). She had gained audience love by going to Paris but lost her husband and had to look after her mother and sister (“Stormy Weather”). In Hollywood, she marked a milestone for Blacks (which she hated to be called) in 1933 in “‘Thousands Cheer” and also introduced “Heat Wave.” With weight problems (cleverly costumed for Jannie Jones), Ethel went to Broadway and won over a reluctant critic with the help of American and British stars. Her lead in Mambo’s Daughters was then established. She scored with her songs in Cabin in the Sky which went out to Hollywood, a double feat she repeated as a lead in Member of the Wedding. Jannie does a credible job of becoming the elderly Ethel, despondent (“Black and Blue”) until her fateful meeting with Billy Graham. That led to her final life’s devotion as expressed in her biography’s title. Janie appears finally as she did as Ethel at the play’s start—triumphant over racial prejudice of any kind. The emotion is truly conveyed by her music and Jannie’s delivery of both.
