When the 2017-2018 schedule was being planned for The Wallis (or frankly any other venue), there would have been no way of predicting the #MeToo movement and how much impact it would have. So the timing of a musical about women and the blues, with songs mostly written by women, is fortuitous to say the least. On Wednesday that musical, Blues in the Night, opens at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Director Sheldon Epps, previously the Artistic Director at the Pasadena Playhouse, conceived this musical in 1980. Two years later it made it to Broadway and received a Tony nomination as Best Musical. The show tells, through mostly song, the story of three woman and their different relationships with the same jackass of a man. The women in this production are Yvette Cason, Bryce Charles and Paulette Ivory. The no-good man is played by Chester Gregory.
Amongst the songs included in Blues in the Night are “Lover Man,” “Am I Blue?,””Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues” and, of course, “Blues in the Night.” The show is being staged in the Lovelace Studio Theatre (the smaller and more intimate of the two spaces at The Wallis.)
On Wednesday we will have an interview with Yvette Cason who talks about the show, the remarkable timeliness of this production and whether or not she is a wild woman who has the blues.