Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Chicago in the 1920s is a city on a collision course with change, and the Blues are the battleground. In August Wilson’s masterpiece a routine music recording session becomes the front line for issues of race, power, and opportunity.

Starring Lovell Adams-Gray as Levee; Derek Boyes as Policeman; Alana Bridgewater as Ma Rainey; Neville Edwards as Slow Drag; Beau Dixon as Toledo; Virgilia Griffith as Dussie Mae; Diego Matamoros as Sturdyvant; Lindsay Own Pierre as Cutler; Alex Poch-Goldin as Irvin; Marcel Stewart as Sylvester; Directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu; Set and Lighting Design by Ken MacKenzie; Costume Design by Alexandra Lord; Sound Design and Music Direction by Mike Ross; Stage Managed by Darragh Parsons assisted by Sam Hale - Michael Young Theatre at Soulpepper Theatre Company, 2018.

“In the sizzling Soulpepper Theatre production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the seminal African-American blues singer, played with fiery humour by Alana Bridgewater, makes a late entry in Act 1 by bursting through the doorway of a Chicago recording studio like a tornado in a shimmering green dress.

Impeccably acted and directed with cool confidence by emerging talent Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, Soulpepper’s production has a slow-burning energy. It eventually erupts: first joyously, when Ma and her band perform the title song, and then later, horribly, in shattering scenes of violence.” - Martin Marrow, The Globe and Mail, May 11 2018