Theatre in Review: Lackawanna Blues (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) Ruben Santiago-Hudson is a fine actor (and an even better director) but, at the beginning of Lackawanna Blues, he displays shapeshifting skills the likes of which I've never seen before. (Others, no doubt, are more familiar with this gift because the actor first presented this piece at the Public Theater in 2001.) In a quick prelude staged in semi-darkness, he channels a parade of characters, executing startling transformations in the space of a single line. It's a pyrotechnic display of talent and a statement of intent: Drawing on his childhood experiences, Santiago-Hudson evokes a gallery as richly imagined (and eccentric) as anything in Dickens or Fielding. Most of all, Lackawanna Blues is a love letter to Ms. Rachel Crosby, aka Nanny, his de facto mother. (His parents were divorced and missing in action; Nanny was experienced at taking in strays.) A natural entrepreneur, Nanny operated a couple of rooming houses, along with other enterprises, in Lackawanna, New York during the years when it was a prosperous industrial powerhouse. Santiago-Hudson vividly recalls the era, after the war, when a string of cities arrayed on the Great Lakes -- from Buffalo to Chicago and Detroit -- bustled with opportunity. As portrayed, Nanny combined solid business sense with a boundless sense of charity, an analyst's ear for the pain of others, and a knack for staring down bullies. Such skills were necessary for dealing with the alcoholics, mental cases, self-saboteurs, and other bizarre personalities who passed through her establishments. (With names like Ol' Po' Carl, Numb Fingers Pete, and Sweet Tooth Sam, you can expect plenty of colorful characterizations.) A startling number of them endured some type of mutilation, such as the loss of a leg, or, in another case, fingers (from frostbite incurred during a drinking binge). Nanny also provided a haven for her lady friends who were burdened with chronic man trouble. As it happened, Nanny knew this territory well herself. Santiago-Hudson slips in and out of these characters' skins with the skill of a burglar, becoming one or another of them so seamlessly that you don't see it happen. He nails all sorts of defining characteristics -- a tongue that darts around in lizard fashion, a gentleman's deliberately chivalrous way of speaking, or a chain-smoker's cancerous cough. Individual episodes bristle with drama: the young Ruben being abandoned in the countryside by one of Nanny's worthless lovers or Nanny facing off against a friend's viciously abusive husband whose runaway spouse is in hiding. Nanny's preternatural calmness, her ability to impose order on the most chaotic situation, make her an unforgettable character. Even as Santiago-Hudson commands the stage, Lackawanna Blues sometimes dawdles, however. The piece is constructed as a series of sketches, some of which are more compelling than others, with no discernible through line. After a while, a slight sense of drift sets in as one realizes that these episodes don't add up to a larger story. Certain transitions are a tad confusing; you may occasionally find yourself wondering, who is talking to us now? Also, some of set pieces have the quality of beloved anecdotes so burnished in the retelling that their punchlines feel a little too artfully arrived at; this is especially true in the account of an older fellow who speaks almost entirely in malapropisms; at times, the jokes land a little too knowingly with results that feel rather quaint. In its best moments, Lackawanna Blues is a virtuoso riff of verbal jazz, underscored by Junior Mack, Santiago-Hudson's only companion onstage, whose guitar playing is so acutely tuned that it seems like an integral part of the text; Santiago-Hudson joins him, blissfully, on the harmonica for a couple of bluesy duets. And if the script powerfully evokes a sense of time and place, it is aided by a gorgeous production design. Michael Carnahan's set frames the action in a distressed proscenium arch, flaking bits of paint like autumn leaves, and a torn-off piece of brick wall upstage. It's an evocative piece of work, suggestive of the play's memory aspect and the decline faced by America's northern industrial cities. Jen Schriever's lighting achieves many marvelous effects: An all-pervasive amber stage wash is seemingly refracted through a full bottle of beer. A blot of red spreads across the upstage wall like a bloodstain. Only a few white downlight beams are needed for a hushed, midnight to the hospital. Also solid are the contributions of costume designer Karen Perry and sound designer Darron L. West. There's skill and professionalism everywhere you look at the Samuel J. Friedman these nights. If I am less captivated than other reviewers, it's because I wish Lackawanna Blues added up to more than a series of portraits. But that doesn't mean the portraits aren't unusually sharp. --David Barbour 
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