FTW, 4.20.2024

Heavy rains forced many of the day's weed-related revels to move indoors or reschedule, but we had plans of our own: a night at Amphibian Stage to see Egla Birmingham Hassan's production of George Brant's historical musical Marie and Rosetta (with my buddy Darrin Kobetich providing offstage guitar alongside musical director Steven A. Taylor).

In recent years, the gospel singer-songwriter-guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe has received belated recognition for her musical innovations. Ray Charles always gets props for bringing the sound of the Black church into R&B, but Tharpe was fronting big bands in clubs and ballrooms as early as 1938. Her distorted electric guitar playing puts her directly in the line that leads from Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker to Chuck Berry. Marie and Rosetta focuses on her relationship with singer-pianist Marie Knight, her late '40s-early '50s performing partner.

In Amphibian's production, veteran Dallasite Denise Lee and Chicagoan newcomer Denise Jackson inhabit the roles of Tharpe and Knight, respectively. They play pain for laughs (Tharpe's memory of white visitors to her childhood church raining "pennies from Heaven" on her as she sang is particularly poignant) and infuse their sanctified characters with earthy humanity, which they transcend when they raise their voices in song. Lee's Rosetta is assertive and shows a hard-won comfort in her own skin. Jackson's Marie starts out more tentative and conflicted, but grows in confidence before the moving conclusion. 

The briskly scripted, songful 90 minutes, with minimal staging, evoked memories of Jubilee Theatre back in Rudy Eastman's days in at least one Fort Worth theatergoer. Taylor and Kobetich previously worked together on Jubilee's It Ain't Nothing But the Blues, and the musical director's piano evoked the period's musical styles with harmonic richness. Metalhead-turned-acoustic improviser Kobetich did a great job of playing idiomatically correct stylings on National resophonic and Gibson electric guitars. Lee's stage presence is so commanding that it didn't even matter if you could tell she wasn't really playing.

There are four more performances of Marie and Rosetta, starting at 8pm this Thursday through Sunday. Highly recommended.