Last Night at Mikell’s celebrates the passing of an era.
Mikell’s was once the place to be. Sitting on the corner of 97th Street and Columbus Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, this hottest of hot jazz clubs was the gathering place for the Black artistic community that then called the surrounding neighborhood home. If you were lucky, on a given night between 1969 and 1991, you might rub elbows with Toni Morrison, Art Blakey, Maya Angelou, James Baldwin–or dozens of other names inscribed in America’s cultural history.
Now playing through May 11th at the Robey Theatre Company in downtown Los Angeles, Larry Muhammad’s marvelous play, “Last Night at Mikell’s” imagines the sad night Mikell’s had to close in 1991, done in by the owners’ money troubles and the gentrification driving Black residents, artists, writers, and musicians from that part of New York City.
Taking down photographs, folding tablecloths, and boxing up the few remaining liquor bottles in closing the bar is David Baldwin, James Balwin’s younger brother and the actual head bartender at Mikell’s for many years. Played by James T. Lawson II, he moves slowly from task to task, remembering better times.
Outside on a darkened sidewalk, a glamorous Maya Angelou, played with elegant pizzazz by Raquel Rosser, comes upon her dear friend “Jimmy” Baldwin, caught delivering one of his several long, poetic soliloquies, this one directed to a nearby lamppost, between attempts to light yet another of the cigarettes that were contributing to his imminent demise.
Julio Hanson, who reprises a role he played in “The Talented Tenth,” an earlier Robey Company production, doesn’t so much look like James Baldwin as he inhabits his tortured soul. In Hanson’s riveting performance, Baldwin’s dramatic flair, soaring eloquence, and dedication to the writer’s task all seem to ring true to what you imagine Baldwin must have been.
(As a freshman at Columbia University in 1965, I briefly met James Baldwin, who was walking across campus with an English professor I knew. As I have done my entire life, when I find an author whose work I enjoy, I dig into anything else I can find they have written. I had done that with Baldwin’s “Another Country,” which my high school English teacher had assigned us hot off the presses. I stood there no doubt gobsmacked as the two men approached, stunned enough that they stopped long enough for hands to be shaken and admiration and wonder to be expressed. I only wish I could have gotten a selfie with Baldwin.)
Together, Angelou and Baldwin proceed to Mikell’s, where they pound on the door until David reluctantly lets them in so that they can kill most of a bottle of whiskey and share memories of their life and times together. Shortly, Miles Davis (played by Nick Gillie) joins them, bringing his own otherly tortured soul to the mix.
As directed by Robey Theatre co-founder Ben Gillory, “Last Night at Mikell’s” draws direct parallels to our current times, when a presidential administration is deploying every hound in its kennel to take down Black leaders, to ridicule Black culture, to disappear Black brilliance, to neuter any attempt to give African-Amercans an even shake. No amount of smoking or drinking or escapes to Paris allowed James Baldwin to avoid the weathering racism he faced in the America of his times. Now, surely, that same white supremacist racism is proudly raising its hideous head again.
Near the end, as a possible antidote, Rachel Rosser gives a stirring recitation of Angelou’s famous poem “And Still I Rise:”
You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise…..
Hope springs eternal.
Last Night at Mikell’s is being presented by The Robey Theatre Company through May 11 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013. For info and tickets: 213.489.0994.
