#LACKAWANNA BLUES FULL#

Lemuel Taylor, Nanny, himself as a child, or any one of the other 16 characters, he is as graceful, as full of violent gestures, as humble, or as arrogant as the situation requires. For, as he presents Ol' Po' Carl, Norma, Lottie, Mr. Yet his physical presence can be deceiving.

A big and lumbering man, the actor at first looks powerful but not especially graceful he has used these attributes previously, most notably in Seven Guitars, for which he won a Tony and a slew of other awards.

As he crosses again and again under Loretta Greco's controlled, unintrusive direction, he inhabits every character without the use of props or accessories or a change from the open-necked orange shirt and brown trousers that Cho has chosen for him. He moves with a kind of comfortable compulsion around Myung Hee Cho's uncluttered blue and orange set, on which only a wooden chair and a chrome-and-fake-leather bar stool sit. In honoring his life-saving Nanny, the actor employs the simplest means, and this seems fitting for his defiantly humble subject. (At other times, Santiago-Hudson picks up a harmonica to augment Syms's economical and plangent chords and riffs.) In further acknowledgment of it, the actor sings 'If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again' in a rich and moving baritone. (Whether it is removed and whether the diagnosis is diabetes are both unclear.) Her death, marked by Santiago-Hudson's looking at the spotlit, empty wood chair, comes eventually. Hospitalized a few times, she develops heart trouble and is threatened with the loss of her leg. While seeing to her extended family over the incident-filled years, Nanny does age she does begin to fail. In honoring Nanny, Santiago-Hudson is recognizing only one in a line of normally unsung national heroes, the sort of woman who might show up as Channel One's New Yorker of the Week but who wouldn't expect or even want to receive much more in the way of public attention. Although cunningly particularized, the group is emblematic of an easily identifiable, contemporary sub-genre population: an otherwise disenfranchised under-class aggregate galvanized by one strong, African-American woman. All of them try to make a go at a rewarding Lackawanna existence, some of them succeeding and some failing.ДЄs Santiago-Hudson introduces the characters, he eventually paints a portrait of a community supervised by a single, guiding figure. The beneficiaries of her steely kindness carried names like one-legged Ol' Po' Carl and Numb Finger Pete, whose sobriquet reflected his missing digits, as well as battling Jimmy Lee and Pauline, gruff-voiced Lottie and Norma, a white woman married to and abused by a black boxer, and Sweet Tooth Sam and Mr. An unerring judge of character, she had love affairs with men who, if they seemed undeserving of her affection, she set right in the end. Ready to give shelter to ex-cons, released mental institution inmates, and any other needy stray who showed up on her doorstep, she was also quick to face down bullies and wife-batterers. Tough-talking and demanding as recalled by Santiago-Hudson, she was apparently blessed with a solacing combination of heart and understanding. Nanny, a housemaid in her native Virginia, had collected enough money by the '40s to move to Lackawanna, New York, where, among other endeavors, she opened a couple of boarding houses and instantly established herself as surrogate mom to everyone under her roof or close by it. Rachel Crosby, more often called Nanny, took charge of Santiago-Hudson when he was a toddler and his cocktail waitress mother was unable to give him proper care. supplies alternately playful and mournful music throughout-the work is perhaps even more accurately described as an unabashed valentine to the hearty, sacrificing woman who raised Santiago-Hudson. Although correctly categorized as a one-man show-well, a two-man show, since guitarist Bill Sims, Jr. Love given and returned is the irresistible theme of Ruben Santiago-Hudson's Lackawanna Blues. Ruben Santiago-Hudson in Lackawanna Blues (Photo: Michal Daniel)

Lackawanna blues