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Whenever the voices flooding through him get to be too much, Ruben Santiago-Hudson pulls out his harmonica.
But channeling sometimes fails, and its then that the harmonica talks.
The stage is more a mood than a construction.
His description is thick, though.
Its solid and dense and lyrical: You could prop that door open with it.
Lackawanna in the 50s and 60s was jumping, he says, with excitement and violence both.
Negroes getting shot or cut every week, he says, but also everybody makingmoney.
Some of his characters seem broadly played, but in each one, nuance flickers like banked flames.
Nannys own founding story is also about nourishment.
She shifts to what seems like an infinity of new enterprise: She takes in boarders.
She turns her car into a taxi, which eventually becomes a cab stand.
She opens another boardinghouse and a restaurant.
Nanny was like the government if it really worked, Santiago-Hudson laughs.
Santiago-Hudson has had plenty of time to polishLackawanna Blueson its way to Broadway.
But the size of the theater does not ever make Santiago-Hudson seem small.
The show is a memorial, and he has been building it for 20 years.
Lackawanna Bluesis at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 7.
