In August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the music is never just music. Beneath the blues lie generations of racial trauma, economic exploitation, and the struggle for control over who gets to tell — and profit from — the Black American story. Those tensions simmer and eventually eru pt in an admirable revival at Round House Theatre, co-produced by Olney Theatre Center. Inspired by the real-life Ma Rainey — known as the “Mother of the Blues” for her early influence on the genre — Wilson’s 1982 drama takes place during a fictional 1927 recording session in a Chicago studio. Over the course of a single afternoon, he dissects the uneasy relationship between Black artists and the white businessmen who control their access to the recording industry. The play was Wilson’s first to reach Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play in 1985. Several revivals and an Oscar-winning film have since followed. Nicole Michelle Haskins (Ma Rainey) in August Wilson’s ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.’ Photo by Teresa Castracane. Ma Rainey’s reputation as a diva precedes her. The white studio owner, Sturdyvant (Chris Genebach), has already instructed her manager, Irvin (Michael Glenn), to keep Ma on schedule. Irvin agrees nervously, knowing that his star client may be difficult — but is also too valuable to lose. By this point in her career, the real Ma had recorded more than 100 songs, many of them her own compositions. Yet Wilson is less interested in recreating a musical biography than in using the recording studio as a pressure cooker for questions of race, power, and ownership. And while the title promises Ma, much of the play belongs to her band. Musicians Cutler, Toledo, and Slow Drag gather in the studio basement, seasoned professionals who understand the rules: follow Ma’s lead, do the job, and collect the paycheck. Then there is Levee, a brash young trumpeter whose ambitions — and resentments — are considerably larger. Levee has rearranged Ma’s signature song with an up-tempo rhythm and assumes that the white producers will embrace his version. His confidence borders on arrogance, but Wilson gradually reveals the insecurity and accumulated anger beneath it. As the musicians wait for the perpetually late Ma, they fill the time with a conversation that moves from shoes, women, liquor, and religion to far darker places, including race, God, ambition, and betrayal. On paper, nearly an hour of four men talking in a basement might sound like a heavy lift for both the cast and the audience. In this production, it is anything but. The quartet — Craig Wallace as Cutler, Derrick Truby as Slow Drag, Ro Boddie as Toledo, and Yao Dogbe as Levee — turns Wilson’s language into music of its own. Under Lili-Anne Brown’s astute direction, their exchanges are funny, earthy, and increasingly ominous. What begins as casual banter gradually becomes a contest over competing visions of Black life in America. TOP: Craig Wallace (Cutler), Ro Boddie (Toledo), Yao Dogbe (Levee), and Derrick Truby (Slow Drag); ABOVE: The Cast, in August Wilson’s ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.’ Photos by Teresa Castracane. Wallace’s Cutler is the group’s anchor: practical, dogged, and determined to keep everyone focused on the job. He is willing to tolerate Levee’s provocations until the younger man’s mockery of God pushes him toward violence. Truby’s Slow Drag is an easygoing sensualist who lives for his paycheck, whiskey, and women. With a sly smile and twinkling eye, he tries to defuse tensions with card tricks and a simple reminder: do the job, get paid, and go enjoy yourself. Toledo, played with quiet intelligence by Boddie, is the group’s philosopher. Sporting thick glasses and an appetite for reading, he has a broader understanding of the racial forces shaping their lives. He is impatient with the band’s pursuit of immediate pleasure and frustrated that, nearly six decades after emancipation, Black Americans remain trapped by systems of inequality. Then there is Dogbe’s Levee, a human pressure bomb. He is talented, ambitious, and attuned to the changing musical landscape, but his hunger for recognition is inseparable from his anger. He appropriates his bandmates’ lunches, flirts with Ma’s girlfriend, and pushes relentlessly to have his music heard. When Sturdyvant appears uninterested in Levee’s compositions — and then offers to buy them for a paltry sum — the young musician is humiliated. His bandmates’ ridicule compounds the injury. Eventually, his bravado gives way to a devastating account of his family’s suffering, exposing the source of the rage he has been carrying all along. Ma finally arrives in a whirlwind, accompanied by her stuttering nephew Sylvester (Jaylen Henderson), her lover Dussie Mae (Kanysha Williams), and a policeman (Zach Brewster-Geisz) who intends to arrest her for a traffic violation. The scene alluded to outside the studio is telling. The policeman cannot believe that Ma owns the car she is driving — a small indignity that captures the casual racism of the era. Inside, white manager Irvin becomes the fixer, paying off the officer and making the problem disappear. In just a few minutes, Wilson moves effortlessly among race, money, and power. Ma may command the room, but she understands the limits of her authority. She rejects Levee’s arrangement and insists that Sylvester deliver the song’s introduction, stutter and all. Yet beneath her flamboyance is a hard-headed understanding of the bargain she has been forced to make. For the white men controlling the recording session, Ma knows, she is ultimately a commodity. They want her voice because it makes them money. Her worth begins and ends with her ability to sell records. When Haskins finally sings, that calculation is momentarily overwhelmed by the force of the music. Her rich, sonorous voice carries the sorrow and resilience of the blues, making clear why Ma Rainey could command an audience — and why white businessmen were so eager to capture her sound. The production’s visual design reinforces the play’s claustrophobic power struggle. Arnel Sancianco’s three-level set places the recording studio, sound booth, and basement practice room within a compact vertical space. Minjoo Kim’s lighting gives the period setting a richly atmospheric quality, while the basement’s cramped quarters intensify the musicians’ increasingly volatile exchanges. Samantha C. Jones’ costumes make their own argument. Ma appears in a sumptuous velvet dress befitting a woman determined to project authority. Levee stands apart from his soberly dressed colleagues in a flashy yellow checked suit and prized two-tone shoes. Dussie Mae, wrapped in glittering yellow, becomes another bright flash against the dark-toned set. More than four decades after its Broadway debut, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom retains the ability to make the business of music feel like a struggle over something much larger: who owns Black creativity, who profits from it, and who gets to decide what it is worth. This revival succeeds because it never reduces those questions to a mere history lesson. Wilson’s characters are funny, wounded, ambitious, and contradictory, and the production gives them room to be all of those things. By the time an unexpected yet inevitable tragedy unfolds at the end, the recording session has become something more unsettling: a cautionary tale about artists fighting to retain ownership of themselves in a system that has already decided what their voices are worth. Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes with a 15-minute intermission, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom plays through October 18, 2026, at Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 PM, Saturday at 8:00 PM, and Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 PM. Tickets start at $45, with ticket discounts available. Purchase tickets by calling 240-644-1100, ordering online, visiting the box office, or through TodayTix. The program is online here. Buy Tickets Discount Tickets SEE ALSO:Casting announced for ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ (news story, August 8, 2026) ...read more read less