Pullman Porter Blues, Cheryl L. West’s play about three generations of African American Pullman porters on the cusp of unionization in the 1930s opened this week at the Goodman Theatre. This isn’t a typical theater review, but more an encouragement for Chicagoans of all ages and backgrounds to check out this play.
If you don’t know the history of the Pullman porters or the shameful legacy of the railroad baron George Pullman, the play offers an introduction to the history of civil rights and race relations prior to the age of television, and the coverage of the 1960s and 70s civil strife.
From a time when labor and race were coming to terms with equal opportunity, this dramatization of a day or rather a trip in the life of Pullman Porters offers an interesting story, livened up by jazz, some beltin’ blues and dancing. The staging really helps maintain the illusion that we are all on a train. The video above the Pullman car set changes and adds movement to the production. It’s not Disney with moving seats, but it moves with the action of the drama.
The play includes details that make it clear why Pullman Porters were not simply low-paid workers, without being too much like a history lesson. The dignity of the characters doesn’t play false, and seeing them bring copies of The Chicago Defender to distribute along the way to people in communities where the Defender was dangerous contraband, we sense the danger that lay behind each interaction with a passenger or white conductor. That tension builds as the trains chugs south. The reminder that Cairo, Illinois was gateway to the segregated south was jarring but rang true.
The grandfather, father, and son who make the trip from Chicago south, go through generational conflicts fraught with tension overlaid on them as individuals, by a society where “separate but equal” was the hypocritical law of the land. The supporting roles are typical of the time but avoid being stereotypical, from the conductor to the white waif stowaway. The story holds up as drama in a particular time period. The historical details make the plot rich and intricate without getting in the way of the story.
There is a moment at the end of the play (no spoiler here) where the whole thing could have gone off track, but West’s script and Chuck Smith‘s directing brought the journey to a halt just in time. We are engrossed in the drama of the three men, and that story is made more interesting because it is contextualized and illustrates life as the Great Migration was beginning but WWII was still a ways off.
Smith, who is marking his 20th anniversary at the Goodman, directed the cast that includes Tony Award winner Cleavant Derricks, Tony Award nominee Larry Marshall, and newcomer Tosin Morohunfola as Sylvester, Monroe and Cephas, the Sykes men. E. Faye Butler, Francis Guinan and newcomer Claire Kander are joined by musicians Jmichael, Anderson Edwards, Chic Street Man and Senuwell Smith, in this entertaining and rip-roaring trip.
Pullman Porter Blues runs until Oct. 20th in the Albert Theatre.
GoodmanTheatre.org 312.443.3800 or at the box office (170 North Dearborn St.).
Abbott Fund and Allstate are Corporate Sponsor Partners. ComEd is the Official Lighting Sponsor.
