Category Archives: Lorraine Hansberry Theatre

Playhouse, Hansberry join for powerful [hieroglyph]

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Hieroglyph 2
Davis (Jamella Cross, left) explains herself to Ms. T. (Safiya Fredericks) after an altercation in the classroom in [hieroglyph], a co-production of San Francisco Playhouse and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre streaming through April 3. Below: Davis explains the meaning of her artwork to her father Ernest (Khary L. Moye). Photos by Jessica Palopoli


No play can address all the ills of society, but a well-told family story that digs into the lives and psyches of human beings doing their best to get from day to day can reveal a whole lot about where we’ve gone wrong or (occasionally) where we get something right.

Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s [hieroglyph], about a Black family navigating intense trauma, is one of those plays that feels small – only four characters – but grows into something epic on an emotional level. This streaming co-production of the San Francisco Playhouse and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, and directed by the Hansberry’s new artistic director, revered Bay Area actor/director Margo Hall, is one of the most effective pandemic productions I’ve seen. It also carries on the Playhouse’s remarkable effort to continue staging productions (safely) and sharing them online.

On a revolving set by Bill English, beautifully lit by Kevin Myrick and with projections by Teddy Hulsker, the world of the characters is clear, and so as the play reveals itself, is their damage. And their strength, individually and collectively, and their hearts.

Davis is an extremely bright 13-year-old. Her family lost everything in Hurricane Katrina, and after having been relocated temporarily to the nightmare of the Superdome, she and her father have been relocated to Chicago. Amid all that drama, her mother and father have separated, she’s starting a new school mid-term in a city and culture that couldn’t be more different from New Orleans and she’s bearing the weight of something she cannot talk about.

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But she can express some of her inner turmoil through her art, and her new art teacher is one of those extraordinary educators who makes a difference in the lives of her students in a number of ways. Ms. T (Safiya Fredericks) is a sharply intelligent, complex and fascinating woman attempting to live her life kaleidoscopically rather than monochromatically. She wants to pass that multifarious approach on to her students through their study and practice of art (notably, in the play, through the work by Black artist Ernest Crichlow and his dimensional approach to depicting Black women). It’s not difficult to extrapolate here that playwright Dickerson-Despenza values art (paintings, plays, etc.) as a means through which we can understand life and each other more fully and more honestly.

Ms. T, whose own past trauma still reverberates through her life, connects with Davis (an extraordinary Jamella Cross), and though that connection is a lifeline, Davis is barely coping. Her father, Ernest (Khary L. Moye), has found work as a custodian in a museum and is doing his best to be there for his daughter. But he has issues of his own, not the least of which is a ruptured marriage and the traps of his own upbringing. Davis makes a friend in classmate Leah (Anna Maria Sharpe), a spirited young woman who attempts to provide an education in the subject of teenagers on Chicago’s West Side.

Even though difficult things grow more difficult in this world, Dickerson-Despenza still makes room for currents of love and moments of happiness to course through the drama, whether it’s Davis and Ernest acting out a playful father-daughter ritual or Davis and Leah practicing their dance moves before heading to a juke party. But this is a heavy story – how could it not be when its characters are facing natural and man-made disasters, sexual assault, displacement, PTSD and fractured relationships? There are no easy answers or conclusions here, just various forms of injury, strength, coping and confrontation.

At only about 90 minutes, [hieroglyph] (which refers to an actual symbol that surfaces in Davis’ artwork) is intense and demanding. Even though this is a well-filmed play, it still feels very much like a play, with the scene changes included rather than edited out, and that makes it even more satisfying. Hall and her excellent cast find depth and warmth and genuine emotion in these characters, which makes their pain all the more impactful on the audience. There aren’t superlatives big enough for the work done here by Cross as Davis and Fredericks as Ms. T.

If it seems that spending any amount of time – even 90 minutes – exploring pain, trauma and crisis is a lot to deal with on top of a world situation involving pain, trauma and crisis, consider this: Dickerson-Despenza is a talented playwright who infuses poetry into her drama. She is compassionate toward her characters, even when she’s brutally honest. And she’s shining a light – made all the brighter when you care about the people it touches, as you do here – on important aspects of history as it really happened (no matter what the people in charge say), on what life in this country is really like for Black people and on the roots of horrible crimes terrorizing Black girls and women that must be examined and obliterated. [hieroglyph] has the undeniable power of truth experienced through the prism of inspired art.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s [hieroglyph] streams through April 13. Tickets are $15-$100 from Lorraine Hansberry Theatre at lhtsf.org or from San Francisco Playhouse at sfplayhouse.org or by calling 415-677-9596.

Undine undone or finding fabulous in Fabulation

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Fabulation

Margo Hall stars in Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation or The Re-Education of Undine, the season-ending production at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. Below: Hall with Rudy Guerrero. Photos by Moanalani Jeffrey

Though unplanned, we have something of a Lynn Nottage festival happening in the Bay Area right now.

Berkeley Rep is showing Nottage’s most serious side with her Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Ruined, a tale of hope amid brutality, and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre showcases a more lighthearted (though not exactly comic) side of Nottage with Fabulation, the story of a modern woman’s relationship to her roots.

The really good news here is the story of the Lorraine Hansberry itself. After losing both of its founders last year – the subsequent deaths of Stanley Williams and Quentin Easter is still difficult to fathom – the Hansberry could have foundered and disappeared. That would have meant a huge loss to Bay Area theater. How would you compensate for the loss of one of the nation’s most prominent African-American theater companies as it’s just about to celebrate its 30th anniversary? You couldn’t. And thankfully, we don’t have to.

Steven Anthony Jones, formerly a company member at American Conservatory Theater, has taken the reigns as artistic director, with Shirley Howard-Johnson as his general manager. I have every reason to believe this team will be exactly what the Hansberry needs to reinvent itself and honor its legacy. Fabulation is a terrific production, top to bottom, and it shows a team of dedicated theater professionals working at the top of their game.

And being a top-flight professional is, in many ways, what Fabulation or the Re-education of Undine is all about.

The redoubtable Margo Hall – an asset to any production – stars as Undine, a self-made star of New York’s PR world. She traffics in celebrities and the high life. She has a gorgeous Latin husband, her own successful business and the kind of Manhattan whirlwind life that kids in the nearby projects can only dream about.

We meet Undine on the day of her undoing. The fact that she can’t line up an A-list star (or even someone ghetto enough to cause a splash but not so ghetto as to cause a problem) becomes the least of her problems when she gets a visit from her accountant. It turns out her too-wonderful life has suddenly become too good to be true. That handsome husband has left her and taken all her money. I think “absconded” is the word the accountant uses.

This sends Undine on a downward spiral that will lead her back to the family she hasn’t seen in 14 years. In an act of fabulation (the act of creating fables or stories), she killed her family – at least she mentioned in the press that they were killed in a fire. Since then, the family – not to mention her real name, Sherona – has ceased to exist, at least in the “reality” of her Manhattan world.

It’s like Undine is being punished for success at the cost of the truth. None of her hoity-toity New York friends knows about her past in the projects or the mother and father and brother – all security guards of various types – still in that outer borough. But now that project apartment is the only place Undine has left to turn.

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Once that spiral begins, of course, it just goes down and down. Cops, jail, narcotics anonymous – it all becomes part of Undine’s new world. Oh, and she also finds out she’s pregnant with the absconder’s baby.

Director Ellen Sebastian Chang mines a great deal of humor from Nottage’s script (which powers along mightily until the final quarter, when it runs out of imagination), and she has a superb cast at her disposal. Hall is just about perfect as Undine – brittle but deeply felt. When she addresses the audience, you adore her immediately, and in spite of her sharp edges, you really begin to feel for her.

The supporting players all play multiple parts – sometimes unrecognizably. Daveed Diggs makes a huge impression as Flow, Undine’s poet of a little brother. He’s got an Act 2 show stopper in the form of his own fabulation on the Br’er Rabbit stories. Rudy Guerrero pulls double duty as the scoundrel of a soon-to-be ex-husband and as a wannabe fireman Undine meets as part of her drug rehab program. Michael J. Asberry makes for a sympathetic father, and Britney Frazier is wonderful as Undine’s assistant (among others).

Halili Knox is a knockout as Undine’s mom, and she starts Act 2 with a gorgeous take Elton John’s “Border Song,” and Carla Punch just about steals the show as Undine’s grandmother, a woman with some surprises up her sleeve (literally). Rounding out the cast is David Westley Skillman, who never met a number cruncher he couldn’t make more interesting.

Fabulation is all about, as Oprah might put it, being your most authentic self, and it offers a lot of laughs as well as a few cringes along the way. It’s so gratifying to see the Lorraine Hansberry producing shows at this level. You might even say it’s fabulous.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation continues through March 27 at the Southside Theater, Building D, Fort Mason Center, Marina Boulevard at Buchanan Street, San Francisco. Tickets are $25-$40. Call 415-345-7575 or visit www.lhtsf.org for information.

The 2011-2012 Lorrain Hansberry season has been announced!

Two one-act plays: Almost Nothing by Marcos Barbosa and Days of Absence by Douglas Turner Ward; Oct. 11-Nov. 20

Rejoice! A musical retelling of the Christmas story; Dec. 11-31

Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall, a powerful British drama; Feb. 5, 2012-March 18, 2012

Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage offers music, culture and history of the Harlem Renaissance; April 1, 2012-May 12, 2012

Delighted by `Ruined,’ Nottage nabs Pulitzer

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Lynn Nottage
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. Photo by the LA Times

Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined, inspired by Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for drama.

The play, about a Congolese brothel run by a woman named Mama Nadi, is about a country torn apart by civil war and about a woman who is either protecting women or profiting from them. The play began at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre last year and is now off Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York.

The 44-year-old Nottage told the Associated Press: “I wanted to tell the story of these women and the war in the Congo and I couldn’t find anything about them in the newspapers or in the library, so I felt I had to get on a plane and go to Africa and find the story myself. I felt there was a complete absence in the media of their narrative. It’s very different now, but when I went in 2004 that was definitely the case.”

Nottage’s best known work, Intimate Apparel, had a successful run in the Bay Area with a 2005 production from Mountain View’s TheatreWorks. That same year, San Francisco’s Lorraine Hansberry Theatre produced Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy.

Less successful was a 2002 production of Nottage’s Las Meninas at San Jose Repertory Theatre.

Nottage holds degrees from Brown University and the Yale School of Drama. She also is an alumna of New Dramatists. She is currently a visiting lecturer at the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, filmmaker Tony Gerber, and daughter Ruby.

The Pulitzer finalists were:
– Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo, a jarring comedy that examines family and romantic relationships with a lacerating wit while eschewing easy answers and pat resolutions.
– In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes, a robust musical about struggling Latino immigrants in New York City today that celebrates the virtues of sacrifice, family solidarity and gritty optimism.

And this year’s jury comprised Dominic Papatola, theater critic, St. Paul Pioneer Press (chair); John M. Clum, chair, department of theater studies, Duke University; Jim Hebert, theater critic, San Diego (CA) Union-Tribune; David Henry Hwang, playwright, Brooklyn, NY; and Linda Winer, theater critic, Newsday.

Visit www.pulitzer.org for a complete list of this year’s winners.

Here’s Nottage doing a radio show on the topic of Ruined, with Saidah Arrika Ekulona, who plays Mama Nadi:

Theater review: `The Story’

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The Story 3

The cast of SF Playhouse’s taut drama The Story includes, from left, Craig Marker, Ryan Peters, Kathryn Tkel and Halili Knox. Photos by Zabrina Tipton

 

Racial politics, lies, ambition and the rest of `The Story’
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Writing about race it’s hard to do more than signify: this person is this color, therefore he or she must feel this way. The depth of real life, the complications of the actual people beneath the skin color is difficult to convey if you’re trying to relate plot points and especially if you’re trying to make a point.

One of the reasons Tracey Scott Wilson’s 2003 drama The Story is so satisfying is that she sets off a dramatic bomb, and just as we reach detonation, the play is over.

One of the key elements of good play writing is knowing when you’ve rattled your audience enough and it’s time to step away.

A co-production of the SF Playhouse and the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, The Story is a mere 75 minutes long, but playwright Wilson (currently represented in New York with the well-received The Good Negro) crams decades of civil rights action, unrest and unease into a play that also offers insight into why newspapers were in trouble long before the current economic crisis had doomed them to certain extinction.

Director Margo Hall knows that speed is of the essence here, and not a moment is wasted in the telling of Wilson’s tale, which is inspired by the story of Janet Cooke, a Washington Post writer in the early ’80s who won a Pulitzer Prize for a story she had, in large part, fabricated.

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Wilson wants to know why an intelligent, ambitious woman like Cooke, here known as Yvonne Robinson (Ryan Peters) would pile lie up on lie in building a career in print journalism. Could it be that as a black woman, she felt she had to do whatever it took to convince people she was a viable reporter worthy of covering stories beyond the opening of a new community center in a primarily black neighborhood?

Or could it be the woman, after years of living her lies, could barely distinguish reality from the falsehoods?

Whatever, Wilson doesn’t offer any conclusions or pop psychology analysis. What she does is pile on the complications.

Yvonne is the new kid at a large metropolitan newspaper called The Daily. She’s aiming for the Metro department, where her blueblood boyfriend (Craig Marker) presides as editor. Instead, she’s relegated to the Outlook section, a community-minded department looking for positive stories to tell in the African-American community. The embittered Outlook editor, Pat (Halili Knox), has fought long and hard to integrate the newspaper to her liking. Her star reporter, Neil (Dwight Huntsman), takes an instant dislike to Yvonne, to her naked ambition, to her seeming denial of her cultural roots and to her sloppiness as a journalist.

For all her crankiness, Pat is the only character who seems to value the power of words and, consequently, the responsibility to execute journalistic responsibilities with care and precision. Were she working in the real world of journalism, she’d probably be unemployed.

Hall’s expert production clips along with help from set designer Lisa Clark’s sliding panels and Cy K. Eaton’s slick lighting design.

Secrets, lies and willful ignorance slide around the stage like those panels, giving us glimpses into the politics of newspapering and the racism of big city life. When a white man teaching at a mostly black inner city school is murdered, racial tension heightens in the city. That’s when two reporters, one ace, one novice, square off over getting the scoop on the murderer. Their duel is intense, and the results are frightening.

The scariest thing of all in this Story is the suppression of facts out of fear of political repercussion should the truth come out.

The Story continues through April 25 at SF Playhouse, 588 Sutter St., San Francisco. Tickets are $40.Call 415-677-9596 or visit www.sfplayhouse.org for information. For more on the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre season, visit www.lhtsf.org.

 

Holidays on edge: Alternatives to `Carol’

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“God bless us, everyone!” doesn’t warm the cockles of every holiday heart.

Traditional holiday theatrical fare is great, but sometimes you need an alternative. Thankfully, here in the Bay Area, we can do holiday entertainment with edge. Here’s a handy guide to some Carol alternatives (not that there’s anything wrong with A Christmas Carol, mind you – find a Carol guide here).

The Rhino Christmas Panto – Theatre Rhinoceros artistic director John Fisher, the man who brought us Medea: The Musical, joins with composer James Dudek , to create a big musical comedy about a disgruntled young man who is show the meaning of Christmas by a fairy – a real fairy – who takes him from the manger in Bethlehem to a gay bar in Oakland. Continues through Dec. 21 at Theatre Rhino, 2926 16th St., San Francisco. Tickets are $15-$40. Call 415-861-5079 or visit www.therhino.org.
Pictured at right, clockwise from top: Jordan L. Moore as Carol Channing, Nicholas Yenson as Jesus Christ, Jean Franco Pilas as An Early Christian, Aaron Martinsen as Aaron, Norman Muñoz as Constantine the Great, Erin Tate Maxon as Slumber Girl, and Rachel L. Jacobs as The Christmas Fairy in The Rhino Christmas Panto, written and directed by John Fisher, with music and lyrics by James Dudek. Photo by Kent Taylor.

The Eight: Reindeer Monologues – Playwright Jeff Goode delves into what happens at the North Pole the other 364 days of the year. It just so happens that one of Santa’s eight tiny reindeer has accused the old man of sexual harassment. Each of the hooved creates gets a chance to speak in this adults-only show. Continues through Dec. 20 at EXIT Stage Left, 156 Eddy St., San Francisco. Tickets are $28. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com.

Wrapping Paper Caper – Here’s an alternative for the entire family. And this one just happens to be my favorite of the annual holiday shows in the Bay Area. Puppeteer Liebe Wetzel, working with director Jeff Raz and her Lunatique Fantastique puppeteers, does amazing things with found objects such as wrapping paper, wrapping paper tubes, tinsel garlands and rain coats. Imaginative and captivating, this is a show you really should see if you haven’t. Continues through Jan. 4 at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org.

David Hirata & Friends in Magic Holiday – Here’s another Marsh tradition, and it’s also a great one for the entire family. Juggling, magic, comedy – it’s all here, and it’s all delightful. Continues through Dec. 29 at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. Tickets are $10. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org.

Black Nativity – One of the most enduring and rewarding of the annual holiday shows is this Lorraine Hansberry Theatre tradition inspired by Langston Hughes’Black Nativity, a gospel re-telling of the Christmas story. Gospel great Arvis Strickling-Jones headlines this music- and dance-filled spectacle. Performs Dec. 11-28 at the PG&E Auditorium, 77 Beale St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$36. Call 415-474-8800 or visit www.lhtsf.org.

Christmas Crap-Array – The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco presents its second annual bit of holiday irreverence, which features soloists and ensembles performing raunchy, hilarious skits and new songs sure to appeal to grinches and Scrooges as well as naughty boys and girls looking forward to receiving a Christmas Eve spanking from a burly, bearded guy. Three performances only: Dec. 18, 19 and 20 at the Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$40. Call 800-838-3006 or visit www.brownpapertickets.com.

Lorraine Hansberry finds holiday home

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News from the the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the Bay Area’s premiere African-American theater company that has been left homeless by the Academy of Art University’s virtual takeover of the city.

LHT has found at least a temporary solution to its housing crisis and will is partner with Pacific Gas and Electric Company to present two plays in its 2008-2009 28th Season. The annual holiday show, Black Nativity: A Gospel Celebration of Christmas and Sacramento playwright William a. Parker’s comedy/drama Waitin’ 2 End Hell will both be presented at PG&E Auditorium, at 77 Beale St., in San Francisco’s financial district.

In a press release, Kary Schulman, Director of San Francisco’s Grants for the Arts Program, expressed her appreciation for PG&E’s efforts to assist the theatre: “It is marvelous news that PG&E has come forward to help the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. It is critically important that the theatre maintain its activities throughout this period of transition to a new permanent home. With the use of PG&E’s auditorium for two shows, the last piece of Lorraine Hansberry’s 2008/09 season has fallen into place. We’re grateful to PG&E for their civic generosity on behalf of one of San Francisco’s signature cultural organizations.”

Michael R. Farrah Jr., Senior Advisor to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is working directly with the theatre, facilitated arrangements with PG&E for the use of their auditorium.

Black Nativity: A Gospel Celebration of Christmas runs Dec. 11-28, and Waitin’ 2 End Hell runs Feb. 12-March 1, 2009.

Visit www.lhtsf.org for information.

Lorraine Hansberry forges on

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San Francisco Chronicle theater writer Robert Hurwitt has an excellent story in today’s paper about the ongoing struggles of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the Bay Area’s 27-year-old African-American theater company.(Read the story here.)

The short version is that Stanley Williams and Quentin Easter, who run the company, were ousted from their downtown theater space by a real estate-grubbing university with an artistic bent. They had to be out of the space by June 1.

I talked to Williams and Easter earlier this week, and they seem confident that they will eventually find a space — many irons in the fire, and they seem to have the ear of SF Mayor Gavin Newsom. In truth, it’s shameful that the city’s preeminent African-American theater finds itself without a permanent home.


Yehmanja Houff, Zeondrae RoShawn, Brian S. King, Stefon Williams, Linwood “Woody” Clark, and Luther Michael Spratt (left to right) huddle to do some tight harmonies in The Black Nativity, A Gospel Celebration of Christmas, a Lorraine Hansberry Theatre production. Photo by Stacie Batiste

But even in this tricky time, the Lorraine Hansberry will have a season. Williams and Easter have done some creative collaborating. Here’s how the season shakes out:

August Wilson’s Radio Golf, Oct. 8-Nov. 2, a TheatreWorks production in association with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Oct. 8-Nov. 2

Langston Hughes’ The Black Nativity. Venue to be announced (likely the Marines Memorial Theatre, across the street from the old Hansberry venue), November-December.

William A. Parker’s Waitin’ 2 End Hell (a spoof of Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale from the man’s perspective), February 2009, venue to be determined.

Tracy Scott Wilson’s The Story, March 21-April 25, 2009. A co-production with S.F. Playhouse.

Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, Dubose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin. San Francisco Opera production in association with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, June 9-27, 2009.

Another “in association” even is Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in November.

Call 415-345-3980 or visit www.lhtsf.org for information.

SF Playhouse’s `Big Gay Dance’ season

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It’s worth reporting SF Playhouse’s 2008-09 season just for the name of the second show of the season. Check it out:

Shining City by Conor McPherson (Oct. 1-Nov. 22) – Wonderful Irish playwright’s modern-day ghost story.

Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party by Aaron Loeb (Dec. 3-Jan. 17) -This new comedy by local scribe Loeb tracks the happenings surrounding the outing of Abe Lincoln by a fourth grader at a Christmas pageant.

Landscape of the Body by John Guare (Jan. 28-March 7) – Long overdue Bay Area premiere of Guare’s part-play, part-musical.

The Story by Tracey Scott Wilson (March 18-April 25) – Drama based on the true story of a New York Times reporter fabricating a story. A co-production with the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre.

TBA (May 6-June 13)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and Dale Wasserman (June 24-Sept. 5) – Nurse Ratched, oil up your sneer. It’s time to head back to the asylum.

For information visit www.sfplayhouse.org.

Review: `Sonny’s Blues’

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Opened Jan. 8, 2008,Lorraine Hansberry Theatre

Word for Word scores with jazzy Blues
three [1/2] stars Musical and muscular

First we see snapshots, glimpses of lives we have yet to understand. And we hear music. First the trumpet, then the bass, then the sax and, finally, piano.

More than a short story, which is how Sonny’s Blues began life at the pen of James Baldwin, and more than a play, which is what Sonny’s Blues has become through the efforts of Word for Word, what we are seeing is a jazz tone poem about love and creation.

Word for Word is consistently the most interesting and adventurous small theater company in the Bay Area. What could be an intellectual exercise — adapting short works of fiction to the stage without changing a word of the original text — becomes, in this company’s capable hands, becomes thrilling, emotionally involving theater.

And with director Margo Hall at the helm of Sonny’s Blues, the experience grows even further. Hall’s understanding of Baldwin’s 1957 work, set in Harlem in the ’50s, includes a deep sensitivity to the musical aspect of both the subject matter and Baldwin’s jazz-influenced writing.

To enhance these Blues, Hall recruited local jazz great Marcus Shelby to score play, and Shelby’s work here (performed via recording) is extraordinary in the way it heightens the already intense emotions of Baldwin’s story.

Music is a key part of the relationship between two brothers. A man known only as Brother (Peter Macon) has gone to school, served in the Army and settled into a high school teaching career with a wife (Allison L. Payne) and three children. His younger brother, Sonny (Da’Mon Vann), younger by seven years, has had a more difficult time of it, feeling restless and unable to fully channel his creativity.

As time goes on, Sonny, a jazz pianist, falls in with the wrong crowd, and the brothers’ relationship fractures. Brother always feels a sense of guilt because he promised his mother (Margarette Robinson) before she died that he would always keep an eye on Sonny. But Sonny has turned to drugs — heroin — and Brother wants no part of that.

After reading about Sonny’s arrest in the newspaper, Brother reestablishes contact with his little brother, and when Sonny gets out of jail, the two men begin the tricky dance of actually being brothers to one another. This means that Sonny must somehow make Brother understand what it means to play and create music.

When Brother does start to come around, it inspires some of Baldwin’s most beautiful writing: “All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations.”

Baldwin is wise enough not to offer a pat happy ending, but he does offer understanding and love and creativity at their most emotionally vulnerable.

Hall’s production is first rate. Her ensemble, which also includes Mujahid Abdul-Rashid and Robert Hampton, is fluid and capable of playing anything from a small child (Hampton) to a fireplug of a jazz player (Robinson).

In true Word for Word fashion, Sonny’s Blues is a triumph on all levels. The production itself — with a spare, efficient set by Lisa Dent and moody lights by Tom Ontiveros — is strong, the performances are solid and the text, already muscular and evocative, becomes even more so when brought to life.

But it’s Shelby’s music that puts the show over the edge. You can’t have Sonny’s Blues without real blues in your ears, and between Baldwin’s words and Shelby’s music, these Blues translate to bliss.

Sonny’s Blues continues through March 2 at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 620 Sutter St., San Francisco. Tickets are $22-$36. Call 415-474-8800 or visit www.lhtsf.org or www.zspace.org.

Special event:
On Feb. 15, Marcus Shelby will perform live, with vocals by Miss Faye Carol. The event begins with a pre-show reception at 7:30 p.m. and the gala party afterward. Tickets are $95.