Aurora Theatre in Berkeley presents Dominique Morisseau’s riveting ‘Blue Paradise’ through Feb. 26.
The much-discussed question in “Paradise Blue,” Dominique Morisseau’s play now onstage at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company, is whether jazz trumpeter Blue is going to sell his family’s nightclub to developers looking to transform Detroit’s Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods.
“Paradise Blue” is part of a three-play cycle called “The Detroit Project” set in different decades in Morisseau’s native city. Aurora produced another play in the trilogy, “Detroit ’67,” in 2018, the same year that Marin Theatre Company and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley had co-produced the other, “Skeleton Crew,” which takes place in 2008.
With intimate lighting by Stephanie Anne Johnson, Stephen C. Jones’s set doesn’t particularly suggest a nightclub other than a looming neon sign and a few appropriately-sized tables. There’s no stage, and no sign of instruments except when Blue walks on with his trumpet. There’s a freestanding doorway, a small wooden counter and a bed in the foreground for some scenes upstairs.
Michael J. Asberry exudes amiable complacency as Cornelius, called Corn, the piano player who’s known Blue since his father ran the club.
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