That persuasiveness flows most effectively from the performance of Braden, who spends the 85 minutes of the show at the Atlas Performing Arts Center as a Bessie wrestling with many demons — among them the fickle white recording industry, a philandering husband and booze. The racism she faced is touched upon, too, most triumphantly in an anecdote about her confrontation with the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan, a group that, appallingly, is back in the news these days. “I looked them bastards straight in their holes,” as you couldn’t see their eyes, she explains, “and said, ‘What the f--- are you fools up to?’ ” The fools, she adds, slunk away.
“Devil’s Music” is a show conceived by director Joe Brancato and performed by Braden with a jazz trio that has been on the regional circuit since an inaugural production in 2000. Like other productions of this type, it’s an attempt to celebrate and contextualize a troubled career and time in entertainment history, through both signature songs and stories. A couple of moments of voice-over narration, and an interlude that transports Bessie to court, showing her losing custody of her son, feel painfully artificial given the otherwise realistic presentation of Bessie performing a set in a club cozily evoked by designer Brian Pather. But the play avoids any intrusive measure of cliche, because Braden never permits Bessie to be seen as anything but an original.
In song after song, backed by the lively and playful accompaniment of Jim Hankins on bass, Anthony E. Nelson Jr. on sax and Gerard Gibbs on piano, Braden reveals the layers of irreverence and ego that fuel Bessie’s art.
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