Displaying items by tag: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

The Chicago theater community is grappling with the sudden loss of Matt DeCaro, whose death early Saturday came as a shock to colleagues and audiences alike. A cause of death has not been made public. Only hours before, he had taken the stage at the Goodman Theatre, performing the role of Sturdyvant in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom during Friday night’s show. His unexpected passing led to the cancellation of Saturday’s matinee, while the evening performance moved forward as a tribute to his decades of work and the impact he left on the city’s artistic landscape.

DeCaro’s career stretched across more than four decades and reached nearly every major stage in Chicago. His long association with the Goodman Theatre included roles in Heartbreak House, The White Snake, The Cherry Orchard, Night of the Iguana, Boy Gets Girl, Camino Real, Romance, Richard II, Spinning into Butter, and The Play About the Baby. He moved fluidly between companies and styles, portraying Winston Churchill in Drury Lane’s The Audience, stepping into Doc’s role in Marriott Theatre’s West Side Story, and earning a Jeff Award for his performance in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His work extended across the region as well, with appearances at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Victory Gardens, Licoln Center, the Guthrie, and Asolo Rep. Beyond his extensive Goodman history, DeCaro built a substantial body of work across the city, including a standout turn in Steppenwolf’s Men of Tortuga - recognized by the Chicago Tribune as one of 2005’s most memorable performances - and a role in Victory Gardens’ Symmetry, further underscoring his versatility and command as a character actor.

His screen résumé was equally wide-ranging, with roles in Prison Break, The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Chicago P.D., ER, U.S. Marshals, and Richie Rich. Yet for many, it was his presence on Chicago stages that defined him - steady, generous, and deeply rooted in the craft. Among the roles that left a lasting mark on those who followed his work, DeCaro’s Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Drury Lane stands out as a personal favorite. The mix of authority and raw vulnerability he brought to the character made the performance unforgettable - the kind that lingers in your mind long after the production has ended.

As tributes continue to emerge, the sense of loss is felt not only by those who worked beside him, but by audiences who witnessed his final performance just one night before his passing - a testament to how fully he remained devoted to the work until the very end.

In losing Matt DeCaro, Chicago loses one of the quiet forces that helped shape its stages for decades. His work was never about spotlight or spectacle - it was about craft, commitment, and the kind of presence that made every production stronger simply because he was in it. Even as the community mourns, the stories he told and the characters he embodied continue to resonate, a lasting reminder of an artist who gave everything he had to the world he loved.

Goodman Theatre’s production of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom arrives with the weight of expectation - and under the dual direction of Chuck Smith and Harry Lennix, it does not merely meet that weight, it reshapes it. This is not a revival of August Wilson’s searing text; it is a precise, muscular excavation of its tensions, its music, and its truths.

From the outset, the production leans into what makes Ma Rainey distinct within Wilson’s canon: its compression. There is no sprawling Hill District, no generational sweep - only a room, a day, and a reckoning. Smith and Lennix understand this pressure-cooker structure and allows it to simmer deliberately. The pacing is patient but never indulgent, each pause and eruption calibrated to expose the fractures between the woman, the men and the system that contains them.

At the center stands E. Faye Butler’s Ma Rainey, and “center” is not metaphorical - it is gravitational. Butler embodies what makes Ma singular among Wilson’s women: she is not surviving the system, she is making the system bend to her will. Where characters like Rose in Fences or Bertha in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone endure with moral resilience, Ma operates with economic and performative authority. Butler’s Ma is unapologetically self-possessed, openly sensual in her relationship with Dussie Mae, and fiercely aware of her value. Every demand - a Coca-Cola, a delay, a correction - is less eccentricity than strategy. She dictates the terms, and the room adjusts.

Surrounding her is a cast that functions both as ensemble and as volatile elements in a dramatic equation. Al’Jaleel McGhee’s Levee is electric, restless, and dangerously unmoored. He captures the tragic duality of the character: brilliance tethered to illusion. His performance builds like a slow burn until it detonates, revealing the unresolved trauma and misplaced faith in a system that will never reward him. In contrast, David Alan Anderson’s Cutler is grounded, pragmatic, a man who has learned the cost of survival. Kelvin Roston, Jr.’s Toledo brings intellectual weight, his reflections on Black identity landing with quiet force, while Cedric Young’s Slow Drag occupies the margins with understated authenticity.

The white power structure—embodied by Matt DeCaro’s Sturdyvant and Marc Grapey’s Irvin - is rendered with chilling subtlety. There is no overt villainy here, only the smooth machinery of exploitation. Irvin’s politeness is the point; it is the veneer that makes the system function.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at Goodman Theatre. (L-R) Jabari Khaliq, E. Faye Butler, Kelvin Roston Jr.

Visually, the production is nothing short of exquisite. Linda Buchanan’s set design transforms the stage into a 1920s Chicago recording studio that feels both expansive and suffocating. The inclusion of distinct spaces - the recording area, control room, rehearsal room, even a suggestion of the street - creates a dynamic environment while maintaining the play’s essential confinement. This is a world built for observation and control.

Jared Gooding’s lighting design elevates this world into something almost cinematic. The suggestion of the Chicago Loop’s overhead train is particularly striking, its presence looming like an industrial heartbeat. Gooding uses light not just for visibility but for composition - creating tableaus, isolating tensions, and guiding the audience’s eye with precision.

And then there are Evelyn M. Danner’s costumes, which operate as visual dramaturgy. The color palette tells its own story: Irvin and Sturdyvant in stark black and white, embodiments of rigid power; the band in various shades of brown, signaling labor, reliability, and earthbound existence; and Ma Rainey in a commanding money-green dress, a walking declaration of her worth. Dussie Mae’s yellow flapper dress, accented with green, subtly marks her proximity to that wealth and power. Even Sylvester’s patterned brown attire hints at his connection to Ma’s orbit. Every choice is intentional, every color a statement.

What ultimately distinguishes this production is its understanding of language - not just Wilson’s text, but the music within it. The scenes among the band members crackle with rhythm and lyricism, their banter and arguments forming a kind of blues composition. It is beautiful, but volatile - a powder keg of masculinity, frustration, and deferred dreams.

What Chuck Smith and Harry Lennix achieve is extraordinary. They do not merely stage Ma Rainey's Black Bottom; they orchestrate it, allowing every performance, every design element, every silence to resonate with intention. Nowhere is that more evident than in Levee’s arc, where Al’Jaleel McGhee delivers a performance that simmers with ambition and barely contained rage, his volatility carefully shaped into a slow, inevitable unraveling.

This is direction of the highest order - precise, unflinching, and deeply attuned to the rhythms of Wilson’s language and the weight of his themes. What emerges is not just unforgettable theatre, but necessary theatre: a production that insists we listen more closely, look more deeply, and reckon more honestly with the truths it lays before us.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

When: Through May 3

Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.

Tickets: $44-$84

Info: www.goodmantheatre.org

Box Office: 312-443-3800

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