Word: rubens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Love makes the world go round, but it can also send drama spiraling right down the drain. The recollection of someone loved too well and too uncritically can bury a filmed memoir in Hallmark emotion. Writer-actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson courts this danger in the autobiographical Lackawanna Blues (HBO, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. E.T.) and escapes--barely...
...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...
...first film, took Blues to the stage, and here he adds a vast cast and a kinetic style. He has gathered a stellar ensemble, including Santiago-Hudson as well as Delroy Lindo, Louis Gossett Jr. and Jeffrey Wright, as the various misfits who pass on their stories to Ruben...
STAR POWER Celebrities on tap for Inaugural events include Hilary Duff, left, Ruben Studdard, Gary Sinise, Buzz Aldrin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. A more eclectic array, including Macy Gray, Dennis Hopper, Lyle Lovett and Andrew W.K., will be at the various unofficial parties