Blue Ridge by Abby Rosebrock, directed by Taibi Magar, presented by Play Per View
Play Per View made their name earlier in the pandemic with some of the best Off-Broadway plays of the last few years, often reuniting their original casts. They scored another winner with Rosebrock’s Blue Ridge, assembling the stellar actors of the Obie-winning Atlantic Theater’s 2018 production for a Zoom reading.
Blue Ridge singed my damn eyebrows off. Marin Ireland’s Abby is a heartbreakingly relatable character – a portrait of someone getting in her way, so good at some things it lets her not acknowledge her toxicity radiating into the people around her. Whip-change moves underpinned by simultaneously a steely reserve and tragic desperation.
Under Magar’s direction, the rest of the cast crackles, with Kyle Beltran’s Wade, a fellow resident of the sober living house to which Abby was court-appointed, and Kristolyn Lloyd’s Cherie, Abby’s close friend and further along in her path to sobriety. Those two characters’ take the program’s lessons seriously, and their struggle is easier to relate to without the main character’s causticity. But Rosebrock is too canny a writer to let the audience rest in the easy moralistic dichotomy; everyone here is a person, and we’re all broken with varying degrees of self-awareness.
This pitch-black comedy set in the tip of Appalachia grapples with the difficulty of getting help and the often Sisyphean task of getting better, of treating your fellow humans with the love it’s hard to even see ourselves as deserving.
Questlove’s 50th Birthday Stream
I was delighted to take a breath on January 20th for the Biden and Harris inauguration, and both Garth Brooks’ a capella “Amazing Grace” and Amanda Gorman’s stirring poem moved me. But when work ended and the night rolled around, the celebration I wanted to partake in from my couch – the closest representation of America I want, I have to choose, to believe in – was a celebratory birthday takeover of a scheduled Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson broadcast on The Roots’ YouTube channel.
Questlove’s been the heart and engine of some of my favorite music of all time. Without question, he was among the driving forces of most of my favorite music of college and immediately after. I’m in the middle of my third re-read of Creative Quest, trying to kickstart my brain out of a winter slump. His DJing is also rightly legendary – anyone watching him rock a massive crowd at Brooklyn Bowl knows we’re in the presence of someone hitting an apex of that form.
In the five or so hours of #Questo50 Anne and I were lucky to see a tribute to Questlove’s wide-ranging network of friends and influences on both sides. And each DJ – without trying too hard, they frequently overlapped a song or two – took up a distinct space. They treated that evening as a great party, even if we were all in our own houses. The latter also presented a heavier version of the usual Wednesday night problem: no waiting for champagne and whiskey that have already been paid for.
DJ Rashida’s infectious set played a greatest hits of Questlove’s work – classic The Roots, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Common – and his compatriots Q-Tip and Dilla. She served a burst of the best parts of memory, dancing to those songs in clubs and basements, probably not surprising since she’s within a month of my age.
DJ Sasara from Tokyo spoke to his international presence and the flow of ideas. She worked local floor-fillers like DJ Kawasaki into smooth ‘70s soul and hard-driving Colombian and Brazillian tunes. Stones Throw general Peanut Butter Wolf worked with the record nerd side. Having picked a crate of 45s he thought Questlove would enjoy, he chose them at random, delighting in the sensual, sometimes incongruity of the way they sparked against each other.
DJ Tara was that modern East Coast party, smoothly and seamlessly beat-matched and the perfect mix of stuff I already knew and loved and great surprises that all made me want to move. And the headliner, as only seems right, was Philly giant DJ Jazzy Jeff.
Like a real club night or warehouse party, I wanted to check in and still have a full night’s sleep for work. I couldn’t turn away – I was happily hooked on this until 1:00 am.
Screen of Distance 