Blue is an American protest opera about police violence and about how to live with a black body in a white world. Blue is the colour of a policeman’s uniform.
The black community has no faith in the law to protect them and fears the inevitability of their child being shot by a white policeman. They teach children how to live and survive and not be shot. The list of things they must not do to achieve this is long.
The opera, which premiered in 2019 at the Glimmerglass Festival, the lakeside theatre in Cooperstown, New York, has been hugely popular in the US. It is now getting its UK premiere.
The didactic libretto is by Tazewell Thompson. The message is loud and clear. Black lives matter. The number of boys and men being brutally killed in the US is numbing. How much longer is the shooting going to go on?
Jeanine Tesor’s theatrical music includes allusions to jazz, blues and popular music as well as spirituals, hymns and gospel music. The score is appealing. The orchestra is conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren.
When a black policeman fathers a boy, he and his wife and their friends worry for his future. Life is not easy for a black boy born in Harlem and even more so for one whose father is a cop. The boy grows up to be an art student and a keen activist in a non-violent political protest movement. Sixteen years-old and unarmed, he is shot and killed by a white policeman.
Act One concerns the mother’s pregnancy, the boy’s birth and his teenage rebellion against his father. Act Two is the grief for his death, expressed by his parents and the mother’s three women friends and the father’s three cop mates.
The cast is all black. Kenneth Kellogg, who created the role of father at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2009, dominates the story and stage with his fine performance. Nadine Benjamin is the deeply anguished mother. Zwakele Tshabalalga is their son. Ronald Samm is the reverend of their church. The music, the singing and the acting constantly impress.
Tinuke Craig directs. The production is enhanced by Alex Lowde’s centre stage design, a rectangle box rotating in front of video projections of New York. It creates an intimate space on the Coliseum’s large stage.
The opera needs editing. The weakness of Blue is that it spends far too much time on the pregnancy in the first act. In the second act, the scene, which follows the funeral, reverts to the happy last meal the family had together before the boy was killed. Dramatically, the production should end with the strong impact the music and the singing make at the funeral.
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