Like a good blues song, Ethel Waters’ life peaks and dips like ocean waves.
She loved. She lost. She kept getting back up.
A jazz, blues, big band and pop songstress who began her career in the 1920s, Waters’ best-known work includes a recording of the spiritual “His Eye is On the Sparrow.”
New Federal Theatre, based in New York, presented Waters’ story in Sweet Mama Stringbean, a musical romp starring Sandra Reaves-Phillips at the National Black Theatre Festival.
Reaves-Phillips portrays Ethel Waters as an older woman, haunted by dreams of her younger self, who comes alive through Marishka Shanice Phillips.
It’s a treat—neither Waters is shy about telling anyone, or each other, what they think. As the musical moves on, older and younger Waters interact more and more, swapping jabs as they reminisce. Along the way, they are followed by their mother, a God-fearing, stern woman who gave birth to Waters after she was raped at age 11.
“What you’re doing is living in the past,” the younger Waters tells her elder self, who has ballooned to 350 pounds and fallen on hard times.
Maybe. But it’s a fun ride, with costume changes based on simple black dresses fancied up with boas, headpieces and shawls, a dance solo by ensemble cast member Gary Vincent, and hot, rocking piano played by Darryl Jovan Williams. Young Waters sasses Josephine Baker and throws her cheating husband out of the house to “Stormy Weather.”
Things get more serious toward the end of Waters’ life, as she comforts her mother with spirituals and she tours with the Rev. Billy Graham.
And yes, we all grow up, but the real joy in this show comes in the tension between the two Ethels as they whirl about stage, two halves of one person struggling to understand herself.
The biggest shame of all? Yesterday’s performances at UNC School of the Art’s Catawba Theatre were the show’s last.
■ Laura Giovanelli can be reached at 727-7302 or at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).