#Lackawanna blues movie
Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.“Lackawanna Blues,” Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s theatrical memoir about being raised by a big-hearted proprietor of a boardinghouse for castaways and strays in an industrial upstate New York city near Buffalo, was turned into a TV movie that won S. After all, people may think the blues are about heartbreak, but to get to heartbreak, you first have to pass through love. He grounds us in the details, which brings not just these characters, but also a whole town to life: the way a woman pops her hips, the way a man coughs, even the particular tint of the Lackawanna snow. His narrative performance is impressive for many reasons, but one of the most nuanced is the way Santiago-Hudson sees it all, as a child eavesdropping and peeking through doorways, with curious and affectionate eyes. It always comes back to Nanny, with her stiff back and neatly folded arms Santiago-Hudson’s rendering evokes a Cicely Tyson type, a strong Black matriarch not to be trifled with. And by the end, he awkwardly circles around an ending that must inevitably tackle dear Nanny’s death. He pushes too hard on the emotional notes, like a scene in which a woman comes to Nanny’s in the middle of the night with her kids and bloody wounds. There are also instances of sorrow, which Santiago-Hudson fails to attack as nimbly. Though even in those moments when he emulates these Lackawanna folks - many of whom, he notes, are poor and uneducated - he doesn’t do so cruelly he treats them with tenderness and empathy, even the brutal ones who did wrong. Lemuel Taylor or speaking in the mangled vocabulary of Ol’ Po’ Carl, who praises the sights of New York, including “da Statue Delivery” and “the Entire State Building.” Santiago-Hudson, a merciless charmer, gamely supplies many funny moments: whether he’s recounting a prime-time-worthy brawl between Numb Finger Pete and Mr. Lucious, and a warble and growl for Freddie Cobbs.Īnd after the dark times of the past year and a half, we’re overdue for some laughter. He slips into a slow, self-consciously genteel purr for Small Paul, a piping soprano for Mr. Still, seeing Santiago-Hudson take command of the Broadway stage is delightful to watch - and listen to. Epatha Merkerson, Hill Harper, Terrence Howard, Rosie Perez and many others. “Lackawanna Blues” premiered Off Broadway at the Public Theater in 2001, and, four years later, was adapted for a star-studded HBO film with S. This isn’t Santiago-Hudson’s first rodeo.
#Lackawanna blues series
When Santiago-Hudson first steps onto the stage, in front of the door of that Lackawanna boardinghouse, an overhead light cloaks his face in shadow he’s just a silhouette, his rounded shoulders and slouch or straight-backed posture illustrating a rapid-fire series of transformations. Michael Carnahan’s intimate set design - a few stools and chairs and a brick backdrop meant to look like the outside of one of Nanny’s apartment buildings, all framed by a proscenium of faded wooden panels - brings the timeworn homeyness of Lackawanna to the Friedman Theater. You might think it would also take a village to animate these characters - at least 25 - for the stage, but Santiago-Hudson manages just fine on his own. Rachel Crosby, the landlord and proprietor of two boardinghouses, whom everyone around town knows as “Nanny.” Don’t let the affectionate moniker fool you, though she will calmly challenge an abusive husband and threaten to kill an unscrupulous lover for mistreating a child, all while serving up her famous Everything Soup and cornbread. Santiago-Hudson, who also wrote and directed the production, brings us to Lackawanna, where he grew up under the tutelage of a Ms. It proves to be a winsome performer’s master class in storytelling, despite a few flat notes. That woman is Nanny, the beating heart of Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s tender and vibrant autobiographical one-man show, “Lackawanna Blues,” which opened on Thursday night in a Manhattan Theater Club production at the Samuel J. But if you’re one member of a motley crew of characters in 1950s Lackawanna, N.Y., well, then, you might say it takes a boardinghouse, and a generous woman, to keep everyone in line.