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Nothing But the Blues
Baby, don’t you want to go: It’s a question warbled from countless block party and street fair stages every summer in this “sweet home.” As it kicks off Nothing But the Blues, Robert Johnson’s most familiar chart signals that this new revue-musical isn’t necessarily out to cover a lot of unexplored territory. Plummer’s scenario offers a handful of ready-made plotlines: the cheating husband, the hopeless drunk, the landmark juke joint threatened by changing times. (That juke joint, the historic Theresa’s Lounge, was an essential African-American institution that endured because of a strong-willed woman—a natural subject for Taylor’s BET.) The song selection mixes other inescapable standards—“The Thrill Is Gone,” Junior Wells’s “Messin’ with the Kid”—with such comparative rarities as Cecil Gant’s “I’m a Good Man” and “You Can Have My Husband,” a favorite of Irma Thomas and Koko Taylor.
While the show hardly breaks new ground, originality’s not necessarily the main point of the blues. A set of blistering performances keeps Nothing But the Blues a high-quality entertainment. As bar owner Theresa Needham, Rhonda Preston brings the first act to a fiery conclusion with a soaring take on Ray Charles’s “Hard Times.” The carefully considered order of the songs and the cast’s distinctive personalities ensure that the revue never feels repetitive; in the first act, for instance, a soulful version of “Back Door Man” by Rick Stone as Old Man Washburn precedes the cocky assurance of Lawrence Williams on “Messin’ with the Kid.” We also get a feel for a valuable piece of Chicago history, as Theresa’s Lounge passes the blues baton to Buddy Guy’s Checkerboard.
