August Wilson's Century Cycle -- Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

 

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is the play in the American Century Cycle that is not set in Pittsburgh. The action takes place in a recording studio where the great blues singer Ma Rainey is scheduled to record. Wilson's Rainey is bigger than life and rules over the proceedings even when she's not on stage.

Wilson seems to have special affection for quirky characters in whom he invests another level of moral messaging. In Ma Rainey, the character of Sylvester, Ma's stuttering driver and purported nephew from Arkansas, plays counterpoint to Levee's brash vanity. It might very well be that the ambling and affable Sylvester is actually a pawn in Ma's plan to keep everyone uneasy, to show who's boss. "All right boys, you done seen the rest now I'm gonna show you the best. Ma Rainey's gonna show you her black bottom."

Ma Rainey's sexual orientation is handled as subtext in the play and adds a level of tension between the queen and the ambitious Levee.

Cutler: Nigger, don't you know that's Ma's gal?

Levee: I don't care whose gal it is. I ain't done nothing to her. I just talk to her like I talk to anybody else.

Cutler: Well, that being Ma's gal, and that being that boy's gal, is one and two different things. The boy is liable to kill you... but you' ass gonna be out there scraping the concrete looking for a job if you messing with Ma's gal.