“Adding a bit of swagger and humor is Elijah Rock, symbolizing all that’s wrong with those darned men who keep giving women more blues to sing. And of course, he finds plenty to sing about when it comes to women … and does so boldly.”
The blues is a style of music, created in the early 1900s in the deep South. Not surprisingly, The origins of the blues are poorly documented. According to Britannica, blues developed in the southern United States after the American Civil War (1861–65). It was influenced by work songs and field hollers, minstrel show music, ragtime, church music, as well as the folk and popular music of the white population. Numerous sources tell us that the term “the blues” probably originated with the 17th-century English expression “the blue devils,” for the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. The bottom lines is that it’s about channeling what’s wrong in a way that gives it an out — in a sharable, connecting way.
Creator Sheldon Epps’ Blues in the Night is the lamentations of four black people living in a poor residence hotel in 1938, and Marty Burnett’s set design at North Coast Rep suits that to a T. The reality is that this program isn’t really a musical in the conventional sense. It’s far more of a musical revue tribute to these classic songs. There’s no plot to speak of, though the foursome certainly do a lot to act out each song all its worth; and many of the songs themselves tell a bit of a story. There’s little connection between one song and the next, other than each is a classic piece of blues history.