In Dominique Morisseau's Paradise Blue, the year is 1949, Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood hasn't yet been demolished to make way for a highway, and the city's jazz joints are piping with potential. That heat draws femme fatale Silver (Cycerli Ash) from far away New Orleans, and she saunters into the play's Paradise Club with a knowing eye, asking for a room to rent.
Despite the area's energy, Paradise is struggling, as evidenced by a sign in the window seeking a new bassist for its four-piece house band. The fault for this lies with Blue (Mikell Sapp), the club's owner and trumpet player. An inheritor of his father's club, name, and controlling temperament, Blue quietly wrestles one more demon: He's considering selling Paradise Club to make way for a highway.
Paradise Blue is a noir work that unfolds at an important juncture in Detroit's history, just before Mayor Albert Cobo's highway project displaced many of the area's Black residents and bisected what was left of Black Bottom and the adjacent Paradise Valley neighborhood. However, if you don't know what's coming, you might miss the doom that hangs above those who reside at and derive their livelihoods from Paradise. In addition to Blue, there's starry-eyed Pumpkin (Netty McKenzie), wizened piano player Corn (Lester Purry), and frustrated drummer P-Sam (La'Tevin Alexander).
P-Sam's ire is rooted in his knowledge that their community is coming to an end. He charges at Blue with his words, his ideas, and even his fists, once or twice, shouting, "this ain't just your club!" Corn and Pumpkin are in denial, and Corn holds him back, convinced that he knows how to handle Blue.
The cast represents an astounding wealth of dramatic talent, playing off one another like instruments in a jazz ensemble. This isn't a musical, but there's music when Ash walks slowly through a room and when McKenzie clasps her hands, standing front and center, so the stage lights reflect actual twinkling in her eyes.
Portland Playhouse has staged Paradise Blue inventively. Most of the action takes place in the club's main hall, which felt smokey and dim, even during an afternoon show. To move between scenes, the bar-length tarnished mirror rises to reveal an upstairs guest room; there Silver woos a suitor and shows Pumpkin how to hold a pistol. She tells Pumpkin, "you can say what you want with a gun in your hand."
Though it's Silver's arrival that kicks off the story, Pumpkin is Paradise Blue's hero. A parentless youth who made a home for herself behind the Paradise Club bar, she pays for it with near-constant work and by weathering Blue's temperamental storms. Her changes carve out the story's true arc.
This work is the second in Morisseau's Detroit Project trilogy, and the playwright sets up Blue's decision to sell the club as the main conflict the characters face. However, ultimately, his choice doesn't matter. Morisseau turns everything we thought on its head.
For fans of noir stories, beautiful women, and sharply dressed jazz men, Paradise Blue gets the vibe right. That the playwright also works in a tragedy of community displacement is remarkable. Portland Playhouse does it justice, with the help of co-producers Saint Paul, Minnesota's Penumbra Theatre Company, which this production's director Lou Bellamy founded.
The production captures fleeting moments before a highway paved over a place people called home, when the horns were still warm and the air was thick with what might have been.
Paradise Blue plays at Portland Playhouse, 602 NE Prescott, through Nov 2, $25-59.95, tickets and showtimes at portlandplayhouse.org, recommended for ages 13+
