Theater review: 'Blues for an Alabama Sky' at Pasadena Playhouse

Never mind the A train -- you can get to Harlem on the 134 to catch Pasadena Playhouse’s jubilant, stylish revival of “Blues for an Alabama Sky.” In director Sheldon Epps’ confident hands, Pearl Cleage’s 1996 dramedy set in the Harlem Renaissance feels as smart and tart as star Robin Givens’ sequined flapper shifts.

“Blues” made its away around the regional circuit a decade ago, but somehow it feels fresh. Maybe that’s because uptown New York circa 1930 looks awfully familiar: rampant unemployment, culture wars and fierce battles over gay rights and abortion. But people dressed a lot snappier in the Jazz Age, or at least they do in this production, with Karen Perry’s knockout costumes central to the story.

Guy (Kevin T. Carroll) dreams of designing outfits for Josephine Baker, but in the meantime he’ll settle for dressing Angel (Givens), a jobless chanteuse recently dumped by her gangster beau. Angel sets her cool eye on recent transplant Leland (Robert Ray Manning Jr.), a solemn widower looking to fill a hole in his heart. Across the hall, Delia (Tessa Thompson) wants to open a family clinic with the help of Sam (Kadeem Hardison), a doctor who delivers bootleggers’s babies when he’s not pulling long shifts at Harlem Hospital. Everybody has a dream, but the rent money’s running out. How long can a wish be deferred?

Culture Monster roundtable: The role of L.A. in the national theater scene [VIDEO]

Panelists in the Culture Monster round table came together Tuesday night at Zipper Hall in the Colburn School to discuss "The role of Los Angeles in the national theater scene."

Marc Platt, producer of the hit Broadway musical "Wicked," Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley, Actors' Gang co-founder and artistic director Tim Robbins, Pasadena Playhouse's Sheldon Epps and Michael Ritchie of Center Theatre Group looked at image problems facing Los Angeles theaters.

"L.A. is very much a 'company town', at least to the outside world, in terms of being the home of film and television," said Platt, who has also produced plays at the Odyssey and the Hudson theaters.

"New York sort of bolsters itself by still existing under the false belief that theater there is superior to theater in other parts of the country... especially when you look at the fact that a great deal of what winds up in New York -- successful or not -- is nurtured to get there by our theaters," said Epps, who staged this season's Broadway musical "Baby It's You." "It is the 'national theater movement,' which is resident theaters of all sizes all around the country, that creates for New York."

"The best we can do," Robbins said, "is keep plodding forward.

Charles McNulty, the Los Angeles Times theater critic, moderated the panel.

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Culture Monster roundtable contemplates state of L.A. theater

Is Los Angeles a 'theater town'?: A Culture Monster event

--Lisa Fung

twitter.com/lfung

Photo: Sheldon Epps, left, discusses theater in Los Angeles as Michael Ritchie listens in. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times