Review: 'The Devil's Music'

Miche Braden (front, center) stars in "The Devil's Music" (Credit: T. Charles Erickson)

"Bessie was more than just a friend of mine, we shared the good times with the bad, now many a year has passed me by, I still recall the best thing I ever had." -- The Band, "Bessie Smith"

You step through the theater doors, take your seat and find yourself in a Memphis buffet flat -- a den of music, booze and general sin -- about to serve as part of the audience for the final hours in the life of the Empress of the Blues.

That is the setting for "The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith," the soulful and stunning musical now being staged at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick.

Penned with a journalist's ear for the facts and a musician's heart for the truth by former reporter Angelo Parra, the show -- which was named one of the top 10 Off-Broadway experiences of 2001 by the New York Daily News -- treats audiences to the final performance of Smith, who died in 1937, leaving behind a musical legacy which is still felt today.

Taking center stage in the show is Miche Braden, whose duties on the show include musical direction as well as delivering a haunting and haunted performance as Smith. Braden, who has years of experience with the show under her belt, comfortably leads the audience and the show's knockout three-piece backing band through the production's tight 90-minute running time.

As the star of a show with only one set and just her backing band as the rest of her cast, Braden expertly controls the tone of the evening, easily shifting gears from raucous to somber and back again, never loosing the audience's attention or empathy.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Braden and company have Smith's impressive catalog of material at their disposal. While the star does address the audience in character between numbers and uses the songs to trace Smith's life, the music does plenty of talking on its own.

Between the show's title, the early presence of the song "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" and frequent thoughts of mortality ("Death had a regular place at our table," Smith says while recalling her early years), a sense of foreboding and finality seems to hang over the show.

However, the show is by no means dreary. The toe-tapping music often serves as a counterpoint to the sad chapters of Smith's story -- which included a bitter custody battle over her adopted son -- and Braden's between-song banter often had the audience cracking up, as did the delightfully adults-only overtones of "I Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl," which were all the more surprising considering that Braden also serves as a Minister of Music at Unity Fellowship Church of New Brunswick.

Credit must also be given to the show's strong backing band, which was anchored by Braden's uncle, James Hankins, on upright bass, and also featured crowd pleaser Anthony Nelson on tenor sax and clarinet and Scott Trent on piano. While Trent was stationed behind an upright piano throughout the show, a mirror positioned on the wall behind him let the audience know that his playing was the real deal.

On the technical side of things, everything -- including Yoshinori Tanokura's set design and the lighting design by Jeff Nellis -- was well-executed in the service of Smith, an artist who was initially written off as sounding "too black" and then went on to sell 780,000 copies of "Downhearted Blues" in 1923.

"The Devil's Music" will be playing at the George Street Playhouse until March 29, and whether you're a student of classic American music or just searching for an evening of great tunes in New Brunswick, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.