Review: Penumbra’s ‘Paradise Blue’ tackles a haunted Miles Davis-like figure with exquisite power

The cool cat blowing his muted trumpet in the corner of the Penumbra’s stage looks like he just stepped off the cover of a Miles Davis album. And Blue, as he is known, shares more than a striking resemblance with the jazz icon whose signature works include the groundbreaking 1959 album “Kind of Blue.”

For this talented trumpeter onstage is tormented by spirits. And while playing his ax helps to keep those demons at bay, music alone may not be enough to save him.

Blue (Mikell Sapp in a performance that marks a career milestone) is the brooding antihero at the center of “Paradise Blue,” Dominique Morisseau’s stirring drama about jazz club denizens in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood in 1949.

Their nightspot, Paradise Blue, has not been attracting many patrons but sits on prime property in a neighborhood that the city is eyeing for redevelopment. As the owner, Blue is weighing if he should sell. If he does, will it be strictly a business decision, or does he have to consider the feelings of his dutiful girlfriend Pumpkin (Nubia Monks), his bandmates Corn (Lester Purry) and P-Sam (Darrick Mosley), and the mysterious Creole woman who is a short-term upstairs boarder, Silver (Angela Wildflower)?

“Paradise” completes Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy, all of which have been produced in Minnesota. A decade ago, Bellamy staged a searing “Detroit ’67,” set during the civil unrest of the 1960s. And just last season, the Guthrie Theater put on a gritty production of Morisseau’s “Skeleton Crew,” irrigating the human hurt and drift that rides shotgun with the hollowing out of the auto industry.

As gripping as those productions were, they were warm-ups to what’s unfolding onstage in St. Paul. Bellamy has directed a “Paradise” that singes and sings. Even the flubbing of a couple of lines at Thursday’s opening night performance proved inconsequential. For he has assembled a company that delivers visceral, sublime performances.

The action unfolds on Maruti Evans’ ingenious set, which finds a new depth on Penumbra’s stage. A mirror above the nightclub’s bar magically opens to reveal an apartment where Silver takes up residence.

The creative team efficiently helps to tell the story, with costume designer Wanda Walden dressing Blue, Silver and P-Sam so sharply, you get a sense of pride and danger just by looking at them. Marcus Dilliard lights the proceedings with a mood-signaling proficiency that matches that of sound designer and composer Gregory Robinson.

Sapp’s Blue demands circumspection and a wide berth. That’s because he’s so volatile. Sapp gives us a tightly wound jazzman who’s tuned into other realms. He can hear an industrial whirring in the key of pain and he relays it to the audience straight, no chaser.

Wildflower has given Silver a slow killer walk, one that commands attention but also respect. She may be carefully alluring but no man (or woman) is going to disrespect her, and if they do, watch out.

As was the case last year in “Wine in the Wilderness,” Monk’s character here has the most dramatic transformation. Her poetry-loving Pumpkin in “Paradise” wears drab outfits early that tell on her mindset as she cleans, cooks and fetches food. But when she connects to her own power, she makes us see vibrant red.

Purry imbues Corn with gravitas and cool head. His role is that of a community anchor, and he portrays it with generosity and warmth.

The sterling cast is rounded out by Mosley, who gives hothead P-Sam a youthful hunger and a loping, sporting elegance.

The truth of the matter is that it’s not just Blue who is haunted in Morisseau’s drama. “Paradise” swarms with musical and literary ghosts. Blue’s spiritual struggle recalls that of Herald Loomis, the searching father who fights in this realm and the next in August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”

And the playwright creates a clever backstory for the phrase “A Love Supreme,” the title of John Coltrane’s magnum opus. It’s as if she wants the whole field of music to share in the complicated genius of jazz. It’s a celebration that that her own work, as brilliantly interpreted by Bellamy, is eager to join.

Who: By Dominique Morisseau. Directed by Lou Bellamy.

When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun. Ends March 9.

Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul.

Tickets: $20-$45, 651-224-3180 or penumbratheatre.org.