MONTREAL - When Mahalia Jackson sang gospel, she had a habit of closing her eyes so she could ?feel the song better.? And she clapped her hands whenever the spirit moved her.
Montreal jazz diva Ranee Lee has incorporated these physical details into her portrayal of Jackson in The Mahalia Jackson Musical, which premi?red at the Segal Centre Thursday night. More important, Lee delivers songs with passion and conviction, backed up by nine members of the Imani Gospel Singers, under the direction of Marcia Bailey, and a happening four-member band including musical director Taurey Butler on piano.
They?re a great team. On musical merit alone, The Mahalia Jackson Musical is well worth its price of admission. Lee fans who have never heard her in gospel mode won?t want to miss this show. Although she holds back a little during the first act (singers like to save up for the big moment), she pulls out all the stops with her moving rendition of the old slave song How I Got Over during the second half of the show. Then she hands over the stage to Tristan D. Lalla as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his I Have a Dream speech. It?s a powerful moment, reminding us that prior to the civil rights movement, America accepted racial discrimination as the norm.
But anyone expecting a comprehensive biography of Jackson within this two-hour show (including intermission) is likely to be mildly disappointed. (For that, it?s best to read a book like 1992?s Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel, by Jules Schwerin.)
Director/playwright Roger Peace, whose association with Lee includes directing her award-winning portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson?s Bar and Grill, has written a star vehicle that?s more of a revue than a book musical. A generous amount of time is allowed for each song. Some become concert-like events that draw bursts of applause (Lee?s take on Summertime) or hand-clapping sessions (the choral rendition of Down by the Riverside), leaving less time for the scenes and anecdotes that represent Jackson?s life.
In these scenes, Lalla plays all the men connected to Jackson and Adrienne Mei Irving plays all the women ? principally Aunt Duke, who raised Mahalia in New Orleans after the child?s mother died, and Aunt Hannah, who took over the maternal role in Chicago after Mahalia arrived there at the age of 16.
Lalla lights up the stage as the talkative uncle who found his calling as a porter on the trains, and ably ages up and down between characters. Irving has a harder time of it. She has the voice and mannerisms down pat, but it?s hard to buy her as Mahalia?s middle-aged aunts.
As for Lee, some of her finest non-singing moments are reactions to scenes from the past, when Jackson becomes a child again in her own mind. She handles the humour well, too, when Jackson reveals herself to be an astute businesswoman who never met a promoter she trusted.
A theatre lodged in a Jewish community centre initially seems an unlikely locale for a musical about an African-American gospel singer who devoted her life to singing about her sweet Jesus. But as the show progresses, the music beguiles, the key moments in U.S. history (such as the Kennedy assassination) strike universal chords, the schmaltz factor rises, and Mahalia seems very much at home.
Jean-Claude Olivier?s austere set, with its spare furnishings and stained-glass window backdrop, places the past within an authentic frame.
The Mahalia Jackson Musical, written and directed by Roger Peace, continues at the Segal Centre, 5170 C?te Ste. Catherine Rd., until March 24. Call 514-739-7944 or visit www.segalcentre.org.
pdonnell@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @patstagepage
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