Dominique Morisseau’s “Paradise Blue,” a Signature Theatre presentation, begins before the flashback with a trumpet solo and a gunshot, a clear forecast of violence to come. When it does arrive at the end, the action is so thoroughly out of character with the shooter that the result is jarring in terms of making sense as well as for its shock value. Fortunately, most of the in-between is entertaining, dramatic, often humorous and thoroughly well-acted by a superb cast giving its all.
The action is set in 1949 Detroit in the Paradise Club in an area once known as Blackbottom on a downtown strip called Paradise Valley. The author, who grew up in Detroit, has in effect written an ode to what once was a favorite jazz and blues center before all went downhill. In a sense the conclusion is a symbolic killing of a time and place as well as of an individual. If only the action made character sense too.
The owner of the club is Blue, played by J. Alphonse Nicholson, a trumpeter who is haunted by demons stemming from his troubled family background and his fear that he is losing his touch as a musician. He has been secretly negotiating for the sale of the club, which he inherited from his father. Kristolyn Lloyd is excellent as his all-around helper and girlfriend Pumpkin, who loves him but doesn’t want to leave family and friends and accompany him on a change of scene to Chicago, where he hopes to get a fresh start. Blue is thoroughly wrapped up in himself and his emotional and professional problems.
This leads to trouble with fellow band members Keith Randolph Smith as the somewhat larger-than-life and congenial Corn and Francois Battiste as the often funny but troubled P-Sam. They become involved in a desire to buy the club and build upon it, while Blue is going his own route. Always underlying is the feeling that black musicians need their own space to counter the racism in the world ruled by white musicians and entrepreneurs.
Into this entourage walks Simone Missick as Silver. And what a walk she has. She is sexy and slinky, oozing a perpetual come-on as she rents a room upstairs. The mere demand for the lighting of a cigarette from Corn is fraught with sexual tension, and it is no surprise that she and Corn wind up in her bed and in a relationship.
Silver is certainly a weird role model for the impressionable Pumpkin, who is given to reciting poetry and at one point, in making up Silver’s room, tries on her sexy undies and tries to act like Silver before mirror. It is all very amusing, but she also discovers a gun in Silver’s drawer and later reluctantly accepts a lesson from Silver in how to use it as a method of women’s empowerment.
Both women give excellent performances, and it is a tribute to Missick as Silver that she eventually telegraphs deep unrest and desperation beneath her outward sexual bravado and stunning looks. Credit author Morisseau too for her multi-level writing even though the play’s ending seems tacked on rather than integral.
Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson maintains an atmosphere of dramatic tension combined with humor derived from the characterizations. Neil Patel’s design for the club, with a bar at one end of the broad stage, the upstairs bedroom at the other end, and an audience seated on each side of the playing area works splendidly.
But the production’s main attribute, stemming, of course, from Morisseau’s character collection, is the combination of performances that come from the excellent, well-chosen five cast members who can keep us enthralled even through the play’s assorted weak spots. At the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street. Phone: 212-244-7529. Reviewed May 19, 2018.