STAGE REVIEW : DEVASTATING ‘MA RAINEY’ MAKES EACH BEAT COUNT

The night I saw it on Broadway, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” felt more like a delaying action than a play: an hour’s wait for a 10-minute bus trip.

August Wilson’s drama makes a much stronger impression at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Even when nothing is happening, something is getting into a position to happen. And when it does, it’s devastating.

The time is 1927, the scene a recording studio in Chicago, far in from the lake. Ma Rainey and her boys have come in from the road to make a few sides . . . maybe. She’s in an evil temper, 1634624544this!

Ann Weldon plays Ma Rainey. Praise be, director Claude Purdy has given the role to an actress who can sing. Weldon’s Ma has got that thing, and she knows how to put it on wax. She also knows how to shake it. Tut, tut, tut.

She’s good, and she’s mean. If things don’t go her way, there’s trouble. One of her whims today is to have her nephew (Larry Radden) do a spoken intro to “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” So what if he stutters?

Besides being a naturally contrary person, Ma needs to keep the men around her in their place. That includes her white manager (Kent Minault) and, especially, the man running the recording session, also white (Sydney Walker). He’s got the microphone, but Ma has got the talent.

Walker understands the bargain even better than Ma does, however. She goes home with $200. He goes home with four priceless sides. (No record royalties in 1927, at least for black artists.) A man can take a lot of abuse under those conditions.

Ma also has to keep her band in line, notably Richard Lawson as a hotshot trumpet player who wants to introduce some new licks to “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” He has also got eyes for Ma’s girlfriend (Kimberley LaMarque). Trouble coming.

The trouble comes from another direction, though. Like “Streamers”--which Lawson starred in years back at the Westwood Playhouse--”Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” ends on a note of stunned surprise. And yet, given these people, given this room, we should have seen it coming.

Purdy and his actors are with the play every inch of the way. The action in the band room is especially true--the boys cooling out and swapping stories, as Ma fumes above, waiting for her Coke.

Lawson has the flashiest role, that of a talented artist who is his own worst enemy (not unlike Ma), and he plays it superbly. But I was as interested in the sideman who didn’t seem as individual as this on Broadway.

Toledo, the pianist, for example. Abdul Salaam El Razzac makes him the one person in the play who looks as if he has a future--old enough to know a lot about the real world, young enough to be determined to make a place for himself in it, on his own terms. He’s been a fool, he points out to Lawson, but he’s never been the same fool twice. He’s the play’s reason-speaker, which makes the ending all the more ironic.

Vernon Washington makes the bandleader a beaten-down man who always knows the score--he’s just too tired to do anything about it. Gordon D. Pinkney is more impassive as the band’s bass player, appropriately called Slow Drag.

Among the lesser players, Radden is especially good as Ma’s hopeless nephew, quite unconscious of the trouble he’s causing anybody. He also brings out Ma’s tender side. LaMarque brings out her jealous side, and Ma picks up on what she’s been doing in the band room as if she had radar.

Director Purdy makes sure that every moment counts, that every beat is realized. This isn’t Wilson’s best play (Act I is still a little slow and the speeches sometimes turn into speechifying), but it leaves the viewer with plenty to chew on. Jesse Hollis’ set and Fritha Knudsen’s costumes tell us, for instance, that Ma can command the most terrific gowns and furs but still has to work in a place that looks like a converted stable. Good wonder she was evil-minded.

‘MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM’ At the Los Angeles Theatre Center. A co-production with the American Conservatory Theatre of San Francisco. Director Claude Purdy. Set Jesse Hollis. Lighting Derek Duarte. Costumes Fritha Knudsen. Musical director and arrangements by Dwight D. Andrews. Sound design Jon Gottlieb. Stage manager Lee Alan Byron. With Sydney Walker, Kent Minault, Vernon Washington, Abdul Salaam El Razzac, Gordon D. Pinkney, Richard Lawson, Ann Weldon, Stephen Rockwell, Kimberley LaMarque, Larry Radden. Plays Tuesdays-Sundays at 8 p.m., with Saturday-Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Closes Aug. 2. Tickets $10.50-$25. 514 S. Spring St. (213) 627-5599.