By Emily J Weitz
Bay Street Theatre was buzzing on Saturday night, opening night of Big Maybelle. As the six piece band took the stage, a hush fell over the crowd, and the filmstrip projected on the back wall set the scene: an image of a person picking cotton flashed on as an old spiritual rang out slow and steady. The audience was in for a history lesson in the most dramatic fashion: from the lungs of a songstress with soul.
Lillias White, the Tony-award winning actress and singer who took on the monster task of capturing blues legend Maybelle Smith, strode on to a darkened stage and took her place in a simple white bed. This was the mental institution from which she would begin to tell us her story.
The story was told almost entirely in song, and apart from an occasional riff with a band member, Big Maybelle delivered it alone. Her first number, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” brought the audience right in to the allure of Big Maybelle. She was larger than life, and she wasn’t apologizing.
Quickly, though, her weakness was evident, as she spoke directly to the audience about how singing was her way of escaping from the meanness of the world, for a big girl. This tension between intense power and vulnerability was immediately portrayed. White related Big Maybelle as saucy, seductive, and draped with a subtle pain.
In “Blues, Early, Early,” Big Maybelle and saxophonist Jason Marshall seemed to weep together in the soft stage lighting, which was designed by Paul Miller.
“Early in the morning,” she sang slowly, “when I find myself alone;” the saxophone echoed her tenderly. She slid deftly from note to note, climbing on the bed of her ward room like a tiger, owning the stage.
The energy in the performance was striking, and White quickly swung from one side of the emotional spectrum to the other. She took a sip of water and then leapt from the bed and into another number, “One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show,” where she swore off the men who bogged her down. In the playful “Hair Dressin’ Women,” Big Maybelle sang about the chattiness of the beauty parlor, and everyone in the band donned wigs. The trumpet player, Kiku Collins, stood up and took a comb around to the other band members, acting out the song.
The presence of the band onstage was potent. Pianist, musical director, and Tony award-winner Michael Mitchell, occasionally abandoned his light touch on the ivories to conduct the rest of the band as they played beneath Big Maybelle’s swoon. They were a necessary counterpoint to the otherwise one-woman show. While White was certainly capable of carrying the show on her own, the moments when the band interacted with her gave the story depth and perspective, and gave the audience as well as the star a moment to breathe.
Drummer Eric Brown also played the role of Sully, the man who came and went in Big Maybelle’s life and caused her endless grief. He introduced her to the heroine, which was the inspiration for one of Big Maybelle’s biggest hits: a dark and painful rendition of “Candy,” which was the second song of Act II.
The set consisted of three scenes: the mental institution, a vanity in a dressing room, and a sofa in Smith’s Harlem apartment. It was complemented by the film projection, which showed old reels of images of the Appollo Theatre and other such sites, as well as neon signs for Birdland and the Three Deuces. Set design was done by Tony-award winner John Arnone.
By Act II, we were with Big Maybelle on her sofa, accompanied by Sully and a bottle of Jim Beam. Even as she gained greater recognition, her personal life and her deep-seeded insecurities kept her in a downward spiral.
She told tales, again as if in an intimate conversation with the audience, about her experiences with John Coltrane (giving him a gig) and Billie Holiday (for whom she once opened, receiving such a powerful response from the audience that Holiday refused to go on). She walked through the aisles of the audience, lifting the chin of an audience member here and patting someone on the shoulder there, connecting with the crowd.
By the end of the show, the set had come full circle, back to the mental institution, after Big Maybelle passed out onstage at Carnegie Hall.
“I’m in so much misery,” she sang, but the words were nothing compared to the power of her voice, depicting exactly how much she suffered. Alone in her hospital bed, with a solitary white spotlight illuminating her, Big Maybelle sang one last song, “I’m Getting Along All Right”, before her head slumped and the lights went out.
Paul Levine, the author and director of “Big Maybelle,” was present on opening night, and Lillias White dragged him up onstage at the end of the show for a standing ovation. The two danced as the band played and the crowd remained on its feet.
