Your Chicago Guide’s tickets for two to the press viewing of Leroy and Lucy courtesy of Steppenwolf Theatre.
Steppenwolf Theatre Company continues its 49th season with the world premiere of Ngozi Anyanwu’s Leroy and Lucy, a bluesy and seductive play with music. Directed by Awoye Timpo, Leroy and Lucy is playing through December 15, 2024 in Steppenwolf’s in-the-round Ensemble Theater. Tony Award-nominated ensemble member Jon Michael Hill returns following his critically acclaimed performance in Steppenwolf’s world premiere of Purpose, joined by Obie Award-winning stage actor Brittany Bradford.
Two lost souls meet at a crossroads, in the dead of night, deep in the Mississippi of it all. They laugh, they flirt, they make sweet music. Together, they conjure a familiar sound from long ago, one of wondrous deals and dangerous aspirations. In this sultry world premiere inspired by the myth of musician Robert Johnson, the Delta Blues fills the air, and every strum has the chance to change your life.
Robert Leroy Johnson was an American blues musician and songwriter. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting on his landmark 1936 and 1937 recordings has influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as perhaps “the first ever rock star”. Noteworthy is the fact that Robert Johnson wrote Sweet Home Chicago, our city’s de facto anthem. As a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. Much of his story has been reconstructed by researchers. Johnson’s poorly documented life and death have given rise to legends. The one most often associated with him is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads in return for musical success. This legend is the foundation of Anyanwu’s play.
Jon Michael Hill’s Leroy is sweet and timid, soft-spoken and chivalrous. He channels the spirits of his ancestors, plucks the strings of his handmade guitar, and sings the tunes that pull at our collective heartstrings. Brittany Bradford’s Lucy is part spirit, part demon, part flesh and blood woman that Leroy encounters (or perhaps dreams up) in the lonely corner of Mississippi. Together, they create music as well as write the narrative of the play. At the heart of it is Leroy’s choice: stay with Lucy and never want for companionship or comfort, but never be remembered. Or continue his journey to Memphis, where his music would explode and influence every musician that follows, yet die young and achieve fame only in death. Robert Leroy Johnson lived to be only 27.
The play undulates and pulses, like a living organism, reaching from earthly things to things spiritual. It isn’t the easiest storyline to follow, but the acting is superb, and the pace captivating. The thread of Delta blues music holing it all together, it is a feast for the senses.
Leroy and Lucy is currently on stage through December 15th, 2024, at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1646 North Halsted Street, in Chicago’s Clybourn Corridor neighborhood. Tickets are available here.