Lackawanna Blues

Tony Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson returns to the Huntington – where he was memorably seen in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean and Seven Guitars – in his riveting, lyrical, and gorgeous autobiographical play about growing up in the 1950s in a boarding house on the banks of Lake Erie. At the center of it all is Miss Rachel, or Nanny, the woman who raised young Ruben and welcomed a colorful group of eccentrics into her home and heart. The Los Angeles Times says this tour-de-force work with live blues music “enthralls,” adding, “Santiago-Hudson conjures multitudes with his rich memory and malleable voice.” And The New York Times says that it’s “performed with marvelous subtlety and rare humanity.”