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Her cup was half-empty
"Ethel' at Walnut's Independence Studio
Ethel Waters, the performer who became white America's first black pop sensation, was a conundrum. Was she a singer who could act or an actress who could sing?
Terry Burrell is an actress who can also do both. With her hair tightly wound up in Waters's signature chignon, sporting a tall angular body reminiscent of "Sweet Momma String Bean" (Waters's original stage name), Burrell portrays Waters adequately enough.
But there's a hostile element in Burrell's representation that doesn't quite ring true to the beatific soul that Waters projected in her Billy Graham evangelical days (when I first was introduced to her singing).
God knows Waters had reason to be bitter. Her conception in 1896 was the product of a rape at knifepoint. She was born to a teenager and raised by her grandmother, only to be plucked her out of convent school by her mother at age 12 and married off to a man who abused her.
Down-home tough
In Ethel, Burrell relates this story while waiting for a call from Hollywood in the basement apartment of her niece's building in Harlem, hoping to rebound from obscurity and reclaim her lost status as the world's highest-paid entertainer.
Burrell goes through the gruesome details of Waters's early life with a down-home-tough, take-no-prisoners attitude. So far you like this woman: She's a survivor. Burrell is at her best when, with the help of pianist Aaron Graves and bass player Andrew Nelson, she lets the music and the singing take over this sordid tale.
We follow Waters from the talent show on Philadelphia's Juniper Street that catapulted her into an offer to appear in a Baltimore review, through the black vaudeville circuit of the Jim Crow South and onward to the Cotton Club, Chicago, Broadway and Hollywood.
Singing for whites
Waters's career was the stuff of Hollywood dreams (Waters was the first woman to sing "St. Louis Blues"). But this Ethel Waters never seems to enjoy herself.
When she wins over an all-white audience in Chicago, Burrell's Ethel feels the need to tell us that she didn't want to sing in front of all "them" white people. When she becomes the first black female performer to become part of a Broadway cast (Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer), Burrell's Ethel balks about her fellow cast members not wanting to take a bow with her. When she goes to Hollywood, we have to hear how Sophie Tucker (her friend!) had more money than she did.
But when Terry Burrell leaves behind the polemics and starts enunciating Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather," or when the actress singer emotes "Supper Time" and ends it by breaking down sobbing, Ó la the real Ethel— well, at such times all is forgiven.
Terry Burrell is an actress who can also do both. With her hair tightly wound up in Waters's signature chignon, sporting a tall angular body reminiscent of "Sweet Momma String Bean" (Waters's original stage name), Burrell portrays Waters adequately enough.
But there's a hostile element in Burrell's representation that doesn't quite ring true to the beatific soul that Waters projected in her Billy Graham evangelical days (when I first was introduced to her singing).
God knows Waters had reason to be bitter. Her conception in 1896 was the product of a rape at knifepoint. She was born to a teenager and raised by her grandmother, only to be plucked her out of convent school by her mother at age 12 and married off to a man who abused her.
Down-home tough
In Ethel, Burrell relates this story while waiting for a call from Hollywood in the basement apartment of her niece's building in Harlem, hoping to rebound from obscurity and reclaim her lost status as the world's highest-paid entertainer.
Burrell goes through the gruesome details of Waters's early life with a down-home-tough, take-no-prisoners attitude. So far you like this woman: She's a survivor. Burrell is at her best when, with the help of pianist Aaron Graves and bass player Andrew Nelson, she lets the music and the singing take over this sordid tale.
We follow Waters from the talent show on Philadelphia's Juniper Street that catapulted her into an offer to appear in a Baltimore review, through the black vaudeville circuit of the Jim Crow South and onward to the Cotton Club, Chicago, Broadway and Hollywood.
Singing for whites
Waters's career was the stuff of Hollywood dreams (Waters was the first woman to sing "St. Louis Blues"). But this Ethel Waters never seems to enjoy herself.
When she wins over an all-white audience in Chicago, Burrell's Ethel feels the need to tell us that she didn't want to sing in front of all "them" white people. When she becomes the first black female performer to become part of a Broadway cast (Irving Berlin's As Thousands Cheer), Burrell's Ethel balks about her fellow cast members not wanting to take a bow with her. When she goes to Hollywood, we have to hear how Sophie Tucker (her friend!) had more money than she did.
But when Terry Burrell leaves behind the polemics and starts enunciating Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather," or when the actress singer emotes "Supper Time" and ends it by breaking down sobbing, Ó la the real Ethel— well, at such times all is forgiven.
What, When, Where
Ethel. By Terry Burrell; Kenneth L. Roberson directed. Through March 11, 2012 at Walnut Street Theatre Independence Studio, 825 Walnut St. (215) 574-3550 or www.WalnutStreetTheatre.org.
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