Word: merkerson
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Adapted and expanded from Santiago-Hudson's 2001 one-man stage show, Blues recalls his childhood in an upstate New York boardinghouse in the 1950s and '60s. His surrogate mother, Rachel (Nanny) Crosby (S. Epatha Merkerson), gives an ersatz family of wayward, mostly African-American drifters shelter, hot meals and toughlove. The youngest is little Ruben (an astute Marcus Carl Franklin), whom Nanny delivers in an upstairs room, then takes in when neither of his young parents proves mature enough to raise...
...That wouldn't be the last time Nanny came to my rescue," says Ruben (played, as an adult, by Hill Harper). She saves him here too--from the narration's sentimental bent--through Merkerson's strong, smart and earthy performance. Nanny is essentially a professional crisis manager, defusing fights, shooing off troublemakers and healing broken souls with sugar and steel. She's part social worker, part cop and all heart...
...rest of the cast is equally fine, notably S. Epatha Merkerson as Berniece and Lou Myers as the dissolute uncle Wining Boy, who leads family members in musical interludes that include a haunting, African-influenced chant. Director Lloyd Richards needs to tinker with the ending, a sort of exorcism in which a sudden shift from farce to horror does not quite work. But already the musical instrument of the title is the most potent symbol in American drama since Laura Wingfield's glass menagerie...
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