Blues for an Alabama Sky
Directed by Lynette Linton
At the National Theatre

Whisper it quietly, but the National Theatre appears to have regained its footing after a lousy few years. Its revival of The Crucible has been met with much acclaim, and Blues for an Alabama Sky – another revival, this time of Pearl Cleage’s 1995 play – promises to be a crowd-pleaser too.

Set in Harlem in the 1930s, the focal point is Frankie Bradshaw’s extravagant set. It’s the kind of set that only theatres as large and well-funded as the National can pull off. There’s two storeys and two well-furnished apartments, facing each other across a hallway which opens out onto the front steps. It is huge. And it rotates, too, to ensure that the action is always taking place centre stage.

The set facilitates the frenetic and fast-paced interactions between the five captivating main characters, three of whom live in the apartments and two who are (or become) regular visitors. In interstitial moments, they are joined by extras moving around the set and this – combined with the sounds of the city being played through the speakers as part of George Dennis’s sound design – creates a sense of being part of the hustle and bustle of New York City.

After an opening rendition of Langston Hughes’s Dreams, a song that recurs throughout, we meet a drunk Angel (Samira Wiley; but played by understudy Helena Pipe at the reviewed performance), who is being helped home by her flamboyantly gay friend, Guy (Giles Terera), and a stranger who saw that she was in bad state, named Leland (Osy Ikhile). This is a typical scene; a bottle of champagne always seems to be on the go and, as Guy says, “if you can’t be drunk in Harlem, where in the hell can you be drunk?”

As Angel recovers, we get to know her and her best friend. Angel is a cynic, drowning her sorrows after she has been sacked and dumped. Part of her wants to get married and settle down; another part of her wants to travel to Paris with Guy, if his dreams of being taken there by Josephine ever come true. Guy himself is stylish, sardonic and the kind of friend we all wish we had – supportive, caring, putting others before himself, and regularly providing succinct yet world-wise advice.

Their lives are lived spontaneously and in a rush, but the plot advances slowly until the interval. In a long play – 2 hours and 50 minutes including a 20-minute interval – that can be dangerous, but here it endears these flawed yet very human characters to us as we come to laugh with them and feel like we understand them.

We feel the same about Delia (Ronke Adekoluejo), who lives across the hall, and Sam (Sule Rimi), a local doctor specialising in helping pregnant women. His catchphrase is ‘let the good times roll’ and he has a penchant for falling asleep in unlikely places. Delia is a confident and idealistic youngster, a family planning activist seeking to win over her church leaders. All four have a zest for life that is sustained despite their tribulations, and the intimate repartee between them is full of warmth and humour. Initially, the friendships between the characters are at the fore, with the possibilities of romance relegated to the background.

That changes when Leland, who helped a drunk Angel at the start of the play, returns and agrees to take a Sunday stroll with her. Leland is a southerner – like some of the other characters – but one who feels more out of place in Harlem than the others. He’s a straight-laced individual who dresses traditionally, and has a strict sense of morality – Angel nicknames him ‘Alabama’. His involvement with Angel, and the reverberations of that, become the focal point of the tempestuous second half of this play as ideals that are initially implicit become explicit.

Our connection with these characters and their lives comes from the sedate early pace and the time devoted to building up their personalities and friendships. There is a handsome pay off. I have rarely been among such an audibly invested crowd – gasps, groans, sympathetic laughs were loud and frequent. This is a play that gives us characters we grow to love, then throws trouble at them to see what happens.

At its heart is the question of what happens when abstract morality is brought to bear in reality? There is a clash between the ‘anything goes’ attitudes of those who fit in in Harlem, and the rigidity of Leland’s views – as Guy says, “Alabama is not just a state, it’s a state of mind.”. That clash has consequences for every character, and they must find their own ways of dealing with it.

Blues for an Alabama Sky is playing at the National Theatre from 21 September until 5 November 2022.

Christopher Day is currently a PhD student at the University of Westminster.