[Dixielandjazz] "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

"His Eye Is on the Sparrow" reviewed

'Sparrow,' Soaring Only When Its Star Sings
by Nelson Pressley
Washington Post, February 2, 2011
Bernardine Mitchell is playing the early 20th-century jazz and blues singer Ethel
Waters in "His Eye Is on the Sparrow," and both women deserve better treatment than
they get in the show. Playwright Larry Parr's historical revue is a bland biography-by-numbers:
facts, then a song, more facts, another song.
The songs are good, of course -- Waters's standards included "Am I Blue," "Sweet
Georgia Brown" and "Stormy Weather" -- and at MetroStage, Mitchell's singing is first-rate.
Her voice is deeper than Waters's was, but mimicry is not the point. The musicality
is rich and soulful, framed by humble gospel but ready to rumble with touches of
blues. The chance to hear Mitchell is almost reason enough to see the show.
Almost. These blues biographies that MetroStage favors are not all created equal,
and "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" is like a bad book report. How can a show fail to
capitalize on a life so roughly begun (Waters's adolescent mother was a rape victim)
and so full of show-biz ups and downs? Recitation is not the answer, but that's what's
asked of Mitchell: to embody Waters at the end of her life, crooning gospel tunes
for the Billy Graham Crusade and telling us the unlikely tale of how she came to
that redemptive point.
Compelling life story? You bet. Creative theater? Not much. Parr plods through the
sensational outline, punctuating complicated events with surface statements about,
say, how tough it was to commit to marriage, or how racism begets racism. Waters
talks about resenting her fair-skinned younger sister and the splendor of breaking
in as a singer in the 1910s and '20s, despite the obstacles of entertainment executives
who, as she soldiered onto Broadway and into films ("Cabin in the Sky," "The Member
of the Wedding"), rarely found the best outlets for her talents.
Mitchell doesn't miss the sassy punch lines, and she plays Waters as loud and bitter
toward the end. But she has a whole lot of narration to act, and director Gary Yates's
straightforward production has no antidote for the dull script (though Yates does
place a little pedestal center stage that Mitchell gingerly mounts again and again).
So we savor the music: the infectious bounce of Mitchell's phrasing in the jaunty
"Frankie and Johnny," her controlled joy in "Sweet Georgia Brown," the simmering
ache that Mitchell (accompanied throughout by William Knowles on piano) brings to
nearly everything in the second act. Her vocal control is pinpoint, and her understanding
of this musical territory goes deep. You hear in Mitchell's voice what this show
can't put into words.
-30


--Bob Ringwald
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After a night of drink, drugs and wild sex Bill woke up to find himself next to a
really ugly woman.
That's when he realized he had made it home safely.