Samira Wiley and Osy Ikhile in Blues for an Alabama Sky
(Picture: Marc Brenner)Samira Wiley, mainstay of the Handmaid’s Tale and Orange is the New Black, makes an auspicious London debut in Pearl Cleage’s all-black American tragicomedy, written in 1995 and set during New York’s Harlem Renaissance in 1930. This is no star vehicle, though, but a bittersweet ensemble study of hopes largely dashed, where superb homegrown talents Giles Terera, Sule Rimi and Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo also shine. It’s given a beautiful, light-footed production by director Lynette Linton.
Wiley is Angel, a singer cast off by her white gangster lover and falling yet again on the mercies of her flamboyantly gay costume-designer friend Guy (Terera). Their dowdy, awkward neighbour Delia (Adékoluẹjo) is trying to found a birth control clinic in Harlem, against heavy opposition. Meanwhile louche, wealthy doctor Sam (Rimi) delivers black babies into impoverishment by day then parties by night.
