Birdland Blue, the latest production of The Robey Theater Company, which is now in its silver anniversary season, must be counted as a major disappointment. On paper, the play sounded intriguing: a portrait of jazz in its 1959 heyday, with Miles Davis (Marcus Clark Oliver) playing his horn at Birdland, the NYC nightclub named after the famed Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. With a live band listed in the credits, the chance to hear some good music—and see a rare jazz play—was enticing. What happens on stage, though, was another matter. The play, which is in a world-premiere run, misfires, largely because of its episodic nature, ill-drawn characters, and general shallowness. It truly is an opportunity lost, though the music sizzles at times. Director/producer Ben Guillory decided on a cabaret setting for Birdland Blue. The audience sits at tables over drinks; the action takes place in three corners of Theatre 4. This makes for poor acoustics and alienation from the actors. Oliver does his best to bring Miles Davis to life—and make the audience care about him. That’s no easy matter, because Davis’s history with racism, exploitation, and hard drugs turned him into an angry, bellicose, unpleasant human being (his biographer called him “the worst motherfucker I’ve ever met”). Still, he was a genius on the horn and a major influence on the jazz world. He also had an irreverent wit, a shrewd mind, and a fiery personality that some women found irresistible. In Birdland Blue, Davis spends much of his time bickering over money with Birdland’s manager, Mo Goldman (Charles Isen), and with his own band members. These include such major jazz musicians as John Coltrane (Jermaine Alexander), Paul Chambers (Rogellio Douglas III), Wynton Kelly (Eddie Goines), Jimmy Cobbs (Michael D. Ricks), and Julian “Cannonball” Adderly (Damon Rutledge). All of them had played with Davis on “Kind of Blue,” a landmark, best-selling jazz album. Some of them, like Coltrane and Adderly, would go on to become as important as Davis was, but to hear them talk in the play, disparaging women and playing the dozens, you’d think they were a bunch of crude, illiterate, low-minded jerks. The play insults their memory and their accomplishments. Davis also comes off poorly in the love story the playwright has invented, which has him trying to seduce Lucinda Holmes (Tiffany Coty), a journalist from “Upbeat Magazine” who has come backstage to interview him. Davis’s nasty, chauvinistic way of treating her is offensive in the extreme, yet the audience is asked to believe she is somehow charmed by him. A different story line deals with a crooked, racist cop (Darrell Phillip) shaking down Mo Goldman (another questionable invention, as Birdland, like most NY nightclubs, was owned by the mob). The cop, in a more believable and important scene, also threatens to shoot Davis during a racial confrontation outside the club. Birdland Blue is constructed as a series of vignettes, which is why it never manages to build as a drama, catch you up in its conflicts and crises. That’s a pity, because there are good things in the play:, some exciting performances (notably by Oliver, Coty, and Rutledge), a number of well-written scenes, bursts of captivating music, but unfortunately a play they do not make.
