“God gave me the voice that individuals need to hear,” Paul Robeson, the nice African-American singer, actor and activist, instructed the black newspaper “The New York Age” in a 1949 interview.
Conscious of his powers and compelled by his affect, Robeson discovered himself at an extremely tense second in American historical past. His highly effective advocacy for the rights of blacks and the American working class made him a hero, however his political leanings introduced him into battle with the prevailing anti-communist forces in Congress, which finally hampered his profession. However, Robeson’s fame was world, and he had many alternatives overseas—till his American passport was revoked as a result of he did not disavow his membership within the Communist Get together in writing. He was introduced earlier than the Home Un-American Actions Committee (HUAC) in 1956, and whereas he was not afraid of being a lightning rod, he was additionally weary of it.
Immediately, the legacy of Robeson’s divine bass-baritone voice and oratorical prowess have survived the political tar and feathering. There isn’t any modern analogue to Robeson, an artist in a classical medium who turned a family title and leveraged his fame to drive a public dialog about peace and justice. (Yo-Yo Ma, the beloved cellist who based the multicultural Silk Highway Challenge, arguably comes closest, however with out the controversy.)
Davóne Tines, a bass-baritone himself, pays tribute to that legacy in “Robeson,” a brand new solo present on the Amph on Little Island that interweaves snippets of Robeson’s phrases with songs related to him. On Friday night time, the easy attraction of a well-liked music recital collided with indirect, fragmentary references to Robeson’s life, opening up a fictional glimpse into the emotional turmoil of a person who was seen as an impenetrable “titan,” as Tines put it. . It was a vigorously performed, at occasions irritating present, carried excessive by Tines’ fiery assurance.
Initially, the present’s construction appeared pretty easy. Tines’s renditions of songs, such because the labor anthem “Joe Hill,” which he delivered with assured smoothness, had been interspersed with Robeson’s phrases from newspaper editorials, tv interviews, and onstage commentary. Wearing a Carnegie Corridor-ready tuxedo, Tines started with an admirable if considerably muddled vocal impersonation of the period’s defining singer, emphasizing a deep sound.
However for an artist like Tines, with a collaborator just like the director Zack Winokur, with whom he conceived the play, candor is a feint. The 2 artists, supported by the designers Adam Charlap Hyman (units) and Mary Ellen Stebbins (lighting) and the versatile instrumentalists John Bitoy and Khari Lucas, exploded their comfortable staging to discover the interior wrestle of a person identified for his equanimity. A deftly executed staging of Robeson’s alleged suicide try in a Moscow resort room, set to a haunting a cappella model of “Some Enchanted Night,” plunged the viewers and performers into the present’s paroxysmal coronary heart.
Disparaging voices plagued Tines’s Robeson: the congressional panel at his HUAC listening to (“Did you give a bit speech?”) and Jackie Robinson’s restrained however chopping criticism (“If he needs to sound foolish,” stated the Corridor da Fama, “that is his downside and never mine”). A multi-part model of the non secular “Scandalize My Identify” offered the tour-de-force reply, transferring by way of disco and wah-wah funk and culminating in an exhilarating breakdown with new strains added by Tines (“Trigger you will mess up and you will find out” ). As he did in “The Black Clown,” Tines used the style as a dramaturgical software, stitching Robeson right into a black musical lineage wherein artwork could be a means to precise oneself joyfully and irrevocably beneath duress.
When he deserted the Robeson impersonation and commenced utilizing the lighter colours and textures of his pure voice, Tines was free to swing and soar. A daring falsetto pierced a Bach chorale, and the finale, which discovered Tines ascending a scale with rising depth on “This Little Gentle of Mine,” introduced the viewers to its ft.
Lasting about an hour, the present nonetheless offered challenges for Tines’s emotionally invested, tightly managed model. He was extra comfy with hand-clapping gospel than with intricate R&B-style runs. The decrease notes had been barely out of attain, and the emphasis on timbral vary generally made his singing catchy (“There Is a Balm in Gilead”), overwrought or approximate.
As a coda, Tines sang “Outdated Man River,” a Robeson signature of troubled origins. “That’s the outdated man I don’t need to be,” he intoned with a tweaked lyric, stripping the tune of its hypnotic lilt in a driving efficiency that traded tokenization for reclamation.
