After yesterday’s early evening football, there was still time for a film and, in this case, it was a re-watch of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
I’ve seen August Wilson’s play three times – I reviewed the National Theatre’s 1989 production, then went to see it with The Other Half when it played briefly at the Hackney Empire (where the roof leaked onto us). Then we went to see it again in the National’s top-notch 2016 revival.
The release of George C Woolfe’s 2020 film – produced by Denzel Washington as part of his long-term project to bring all of Wilson’s plays to the screen – was overshadowed by news of the death of star Chadwick Boseman at just 43 from cancer, while the film was in post-production.
His performance as the tragic, traumatised trumpeter Levee in Ma’s four-piece band – at once full of contempt for the white men who only tolerate the black musicians because they bring money in, but also overly deferential to them because he wants his own band – is brilliant. Little wonder that he received a hat-load of posthumous awards and nominations.
In a way, though, Boseman’s tragically early passing dwarfed the rest of the cast. The Other Half and I streamed it early after it landed on Netflix, having linked up the TV to one of our phones because we were at the start of two months without the internet after a major blow-out. That was how much we wanted to see it – and see it early.
Yet seeing it again now, I can not only re-engage with the brilliance of Boseman, but also better appreciate Viola Davis’s powerhouse performance as Ma.
I’m also now familiar with Colman Domingo, who played Cutler so well, and can enjoy more fully Glynn Turman’s turn as Toledo.
The film landed barely six months after the murder of George Floyd, illustrating just how topical the themes of Wilson’s – and Woolfe’s film – remain.
An essential watch.
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