Sinking into the corner booth of a dimly lit, smoky New York jazz lounge can transport you back several decades to a time when jazzmen reigned as kings of music. Clifford Brown. Fats Navarro. Dizzy, Miles and Chet. All it takes is one tender trumpet solo to make time stand still. The intense and passionate life of a Manhattan jazz musician and his broken family is captured in Warren Leight’s beautifully written ‘Side Man,’ on stage at the Malibu Stage Co. through July 18. Directed by the company’s interim artistic director Christopher Hart and produced by co-founder Jackie Bridgeman, ‘Side Man’ is complete with powerful performances that resonate long after the lights go down. Set first in 1985 and traveling back to 1953, the play is narrated by the young but reflective Clifford (David Barry Gray), whose father, Gene (Jack Conley) was a sideman in the legendary Claude Thornhill big band. A jazz term, sideman ‘refers to a musician who works for hire on band jobs, who knows the standards by heart and who can solo dazzlingly but also blend in with an orchestra’s sound.’ Leight wrote ‘Side Man’ based on his own father, Donald Leight, now 81, a trumpet player who worked with Claude Thornhill, Woody Herman and other band leaders through the 1950s. Perhaps this is why the characters in the memory play feel so real’their emotions raw and human. Of particular note is Conley’s commanding performance as Gene, an intensely devoted musician whose oblivious neglect of his family evokes some of the drama’s heaviest emotions. With his deep, gravelly voice and stoic demeanor, Conley creates a striking sideman. No sooner do we meet Gene than we are introduced to his family of fellow horn players, Ziggy (Todd Truly), Al (John Mariano) and Jonesy (Eddie Kehler); their loyalty to each other is rooted in their shared obsession with jazz. These quirky, comical and self-destructive characters have measured their life in gigs, not money’burning brass, getting high, traveling light and eating soup. In older age, they reminisce in the same dark, intimate jazz clubs. Their home base is the Melody Lounge, where Clifford (named for Clifford Brown) goes to visit the father he hasn’t seen in years before heading west to pursue a painting career. En route to the Lounge, he stops by their old apartment to see his alcoholic mother, Terry (Ellen Greene), who is dead inside from lonely years of marriage to a man married to his music. Separated from Gene, Terry can still think only of her love for him and their son. Greene stuns the audience with her complex character’a girlishly naive but motherly type with a dirty mouth and sudden temper. Her transformation into an alcoholic mother is painfully moving. Some may recognize her sweet, high-pitched voice from her role as Audrey in Alan Menken’s and Howard Ashman’s ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ where she initiated the role of Audrey singing ‘Suddenly Seymour’ and ‘Somewhere That’s Green.’ She also co-starred in the movie version. Clifford traces the breakdown of his parents’ marriage through the rise and decline of jazz, superseded by the advent of rock ‘n roll. Raised on his father’s obsession with jazz and his mother’s resentment, Clifford was made old at a young age and forced to assume a parental role. It is not a coincidence that Terry tells him to ask his father to play her favorite song, ‘Why Was I Born?’ or that when Clifford walks into the bar, he hears his father soloing on ‘I Remember Clifford.’ ‘Genie on a ballad, break your heart every time,’ says Clifford of his father’s playing. And the moving production of ‘Side Man’ does break your heart, in the way that only the best jazz solos and tender melodies can. Some of the most poignant scenes illustrate the intense brotherhood formed by the four musicians over their shared passion for and understanding of jazz. When they listen to Clifford Brown’s last recording of ‘A Night in Tunisia,’ we see Ziggy, Al and Gene at their most ecstatic, nodding their heads, laughing and reacting to every melodious rise and fall. Actors Conley, Kehler, Truly and Mariano maintain their chemistry throughout the play, creating moments of humorous camaraderie and warm nostalgia for a bygone era. Kehler’s performance as the lovable but strung-out Jonesy is particularly impressive. Mary Lou Metzger plays the role of Patsy, a Melody Lounge waitress and constant in the lives of the jazzmen and Clifford. The costumes (Paula Post), especially in the ’50s and ’60s scenes, are fun to see, and the set design (Gary Randall) captures the intimate environment of the New York jazz scene. Though the production lacks live music, ‘Side Man’ is a memorable show to be seen, felt and heard in the intimate and rustic Malibu Stage Co. setting. It is not surprising that such a moving play goes up in a former place of worship. Performances run Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25. The Malibu Stage Co. is located at 29243 Pacific Coast Highway. For reservations call 589-1998.
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