There will be no raining on Ma Rainey's' parade at Beck

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," currently showing at The Beck Center for the Arts, is Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson's first in a 10-play cycle examining a century of the African-American experience.

Centering on Ma Rainey, a real-life blues singer in the 1920s, the show takes place during a single day in a recording studio.

By turns hilarious and thought-provoking, the incredibly well-built script encapsulates racism under the metaphor of a white recording studio surviving on the back of its black performers. It also contrasts the dreams of an individual against the intricate group dynamics of a jazz band.

The actors are, without exception, excellent. The dialogue within the band as they await Ma's arrival is funny and real, ranging from the mundanity of daily life to metaphysics, from how they spend their day to how they dream of spending their lives.

Larry Arrington-Bey, Anthony Alfonzia Nickerson El, and Robert J. Williams are point-perfect in their roles as musicians. Michael May, as the tortured dreamer Levee, turns in a brave and brilliant performance. Although uneducated and scarred, Levee dreams of becoming his own man in a white world, a dream that in 1927 can only end in sorrow.

The arrival of Ma and her entourage, anticipated like a salvation, drives the day from idle time-killing conversation to dynamic musicianship. As played by Angela Gillespie-Winborn, Ma is pure diva, strutting and commanding and difficult.

When she opens her mouth to sing, though, the glorious music changes everything. There is soul there, colored by blues, and the unadulterated thrill of that music makes you understand why the studio and her band would choose to remain in her demanding orbit. It is a transcendent moment that informs the rest of the show.

Sarah May's direction is knowing and sure. The dialogue passes between the characters like jazz itself, and the stage is constantly busy in a real-world way. She utilizes the amazing set like a painter, and the show's pacing ebbs and flows in constantly fascinating ways....