Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

This improbably titled play is a stormingly good piece of writing from the underperformed African American playwright August Wilson – part of a ten-play cycle set in each decade of the twentieth century. It’s brought to Edinburgh by a young ensemble cast from New York’s Hamilton College, who can’t quite bring out its full potential but still provide a fascinating and entertaining ride.

Set over one day in a recording studio in 1920s Chicago, the play is a subtle examination of the simmering power struggles between a group of black jazz musicians, their white managers, and the law. Ma Rainey herself is a spirited diva, played by Ileanna Becerra as a petulant brat with not quite enough charisma to convince. She’s in perpetual conflict with her harried manager Irvin (Ryan Parker, whose face sadly seems stuck in one expression, albeit an appropriately pained one), himself under the yoke of the intolerant studio boss, clearly a man who sees his black workforce as mere cheap labour rather than as artists.

Better realised are the scenes between the four male musicians, who take turns to mock each other about their subservience to the "white man" until the troubled Levee, played with an impressively controlled, wild energy by Kadahj Bennet, finally snaps under the pressure of a suppressed memory from his youth. It’s a well-directed and earnestly performed attempt at a very challenging piece of work. If it doesn’t come to the boil as thrillingly as it should, it’s still worth seeing for the real insight it provides into a time and culture that’s too often caricatured.