August Wilson, who died in 2005, was a playwright whose ten plays were comparable to the body of work of other American theater giants such as Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller. From “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (1984) to his last work, “Radio Golf” (2005), Wilson chronicled the African-American experience in the 20th century. He won seven New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards, and two Pulitzer Prizes. Wilson’s plays constructed a poetic saga of Black life by focusing each work on a different decade of the 20th century, with most of them taking place in Pittsburgh’s working class Hill District where Wilson himself was raised. His stage is populated with Jitney drivers, preachers, railroad porters, blues singers, trumpet players, and boardinghouse landladies. In a Paris Review interview, he made his intentions clear: “I don’t write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but I work as an artist. Here in America whites have a particular view of Blacks. I think my plays offer them a different way to look at Black Americans.” In addition, he wanted his Black audiences to remember their histories, especially “the stigma, and shame” of slavery, whose agonizing imagery he powerfully invokes in his work.
One of Wilson’s first plays, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” has been turned into a film for Netflix, directed by George C. Wolfe. Set in Chicago in 1927, the film focuses on the legendary singer credited with inventing the blues and played in this film by the gifted, but at times overly grand and mannered, Viola Davis.
Ma Rainey, who is introduced coming in late for a recording, is tough, impatient, and intimidating—a larger-than-life figure. Davis gained weight, wore a fat suit, and applied a heavy splattering of make-up to sweat and rage as Rainey in Chicago’s summer heat. There is nothing endearing about her, but her behavior is totally understandable, given the racism and sexism of the time and the way the white record industry exploited Black artists. She sees herself as the boss—offering no room for anyone to question her, be they Black or white, man or woman—and hungrily holds on to her power. Rainey is also openly gay, but knows she is a money-spinner for white record producers whom she frightens but can’t control and knows would treat her as badly as any Black woman once she stops making money. Wilson adds a touch of nuance to Rainey’s very anxious white manager, Irvin (Jeremy Shamos), who bears the brunt of her abuse and, though clearly self-interested, conveys some decency.
The tensions in the film also appear in relations between Rainey and Levee—a cocky young trumpeter with bright yellow shoes—played by Chadwick Boseman in his final role. Levee is ambitious—he wants to create his own band and is promoting a new, jazzier arrangement of the title song. He offers a challenge to her authority that Rainey won’t countenance. Boseman emanates great energy, a surface charm, and a big smile, but underneath exists a murderous rage caused by a boyhood where violent racist experiences were his lot (“I have had bad luck all my life”). He carries the visible scars of the violence on his back. Wilson has, with Boseman’s skilled collaboration, created a tragic figure in Levee—an anguished man doomed to failure.
There are also three older, more pragmatic musicians who make up Ma Rainey’s ensemble, and Wilson has a knack for making them come alive as people in their own rights. Among them is piano player Toledo (Glynn Turman), a reader and a reflective man whose commentary—telling Levee he went down the same paths when he was young, but knew which ones were dead ends—only angers Levee.
The stories they tell and the blues themselves are a profound part of the Black experience that Wilson sees as “the betrayal, the pain, the laughter, the joy—all parts of understanding life.” Wolfe’s attempts to open up the play are just gestures; “Ma Rainey” is a theatrical, not a cinematic experience. It’s the words, speeches, and performances that are prime. It’s a more powerful work when seen in the theater, but the film is still Wilson, who has a genius for getting at the agonizing and life-affirming heart of the Black experience without ever forgetting he’s an artist not a polemicist.
