Low Down Dirty Blues

Northlight Theatre

Chicago, (847) 673-6300

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Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman’s new jukebox musical “seamlessly traces the full emotional arc of the blues,” said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. Set in a fictional blues club on Chicago’s South Side, the show revels in the genre’s remarkable diversity with some two dozen songs that range from the “deeply spiritual sound” that originated in the clapboard churches of the Deep South to “the raucous, sexually driven double-entendre style born in the roadside juke joints of the Delta.” The cast members, led by Sandra Reaves-Phillips, aren’t afraid to get “down and dirty,” as the show’s title suggests, but all share a winning “combination of complete authenticity and theatrical polish.”

Yet audiences looking for anything resembling a narrative will be sorely disappointed, said Justin Hayford in the Chicago Reader. Myler and Wheetman certainly know their blues—wisely, they eschew run-of-the-mill genre standards in favor of lesser-known gems such as “If I Can’t Sell It,” “My Handyman,” and the bawdy “My Stove’s in Good Condition.” But it’s hard to shake the notion that, were it not for the 22 well-selected songs, “the show would have no reason to exist.” Even audience members who are coming mainly to hear the music deserve more than a plot that “starts nowhere and goes nowhere.”

It’s true, the script could use some extra “connective tissue,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. The audience can’t even be quite sure of “the where and the when” of the events transpiring before their eyes. Yet the performers are so strong it scarcely matters. Reaves-Phillips “is the full package: vocals, zest, personality, and truth,” while guitarist and singer Mississippi Charles Bevel lends “an authentic blues personality” to the proceeding. But it’s Felicia P. Fields, Tony-nominated for her turn in The Color Purple, who ends up being the show’s main attraction. Her rendition of “Good Morning Heartache” is nothing short of “an emotional and musical feast performed by a woman in her vocal prime.” I can hardly imagine a better tribute to Chicago’s “singular place in the history of the low-down dirty blues” than a gutsy number like that.