{"id":10790,"date":"2019-08-29T12:25:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T12:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/?p=10790"},"modified":"2019-10-23T15:58:09","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T15:58:09","slug":"sharon-d-clarke-is-in-blues-in-the-night-thats-probably-all-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2019\/08\/29\/sharon-d-clarke-is-in-blues-in-the-night-thats-probably-all-you-need-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharon D. Clarke is in Blues in the Night & That\u2019s Probably All You Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It\u2019s Theatre Thursday! Today\u2019s show is Blues in the Night, playing at London\u2019s Kiln Theatre in Kilburn until September 7.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Before we get into specifics about this revue-style show, I need to share two things. First, Husbo & I went to a cheeky weekday matinee so we were ready for the old-white-people chatterboxing that comes with the territory. But the show opens with a single musician in spotlight playing the saxophone, and as soon as he blared out one strong note, an old lady not close to me<\/em> said at full volume \u201coh you know I love the sax\u201d. I mean. We were not ready for that<\/em>. We were in for quite an experience. Old biddies LOVE THEM SOME TALKING.<\/p>\n The second thing is that whenever I say\/think\/type this title, my head goes \u201cblues is in the niiiii-iii-ii-ii-ight, blues is in the niiiii-iii-ii-ii-ight\u201d like \u201cGroove is in the heart\u201d you get it. Okay I guess I didn\u2019t *need* to share that.<\/p>\n Blues in the Night<\/em> is a 1980s revue of bluesy standards from well before then (mostly Bessie Smith, like at least half). It \u201ctakes place\u201d in 1938 in a run-down Chicago hotel, and it\u2019s \u201cabout\u201d three down-on-their-luck women \u2013 one older, one middle I guess, and one younger \u2013 and one man. The previous phrases suggesting there\u2019s a story are in quotes because this is a revue, like Ain\u2019t Misbehavin<\/a><\/strong><\/span>,<\/em> that does not have a story. But unlike the enjoyable Ain\u2019t Misbehavin<\/em>, in which they were cool just putting on a killer fun show and accepting that there was no story or characters, Blues<\/em> does attempt to establish characters and a whisper-thin outline of a background story, but that makes it even more obvious that there is none and kind of awkwardly cringey when they do weird \u2018character things\u2019.<\/p>\n I looked on the wikipedia page for some info and it says Blues<\/em> is actually about these three women and the one \u201csnake of a man\u201d who has screwed them all over. I did NOT get that. The one man, Clive Rowe, seemed more to just be filling a role of \u2018man\u2019 in each song when needed, not that he was actually the<\/em> man involved with these three women. It doesn\u2019t make sense to me that he would have a sexual history with the three of them because, I don\u2019t know how to say this nicely but he doesn\u2019t exactly scream \u2018womanizer\u2019. I think we can chalk him up to being miscast if that\u2019s what they were trying to go for (his singing was fine), along with the youngest woman, Gemma Sutton, who I loved in The Rink<\/em> <\/strong><\/span><\/a>but is wrong here since her character\u2019s songs simply do not fit her voice.<\/p>\n