Heart and Soul

Ruben Santiago-Hudson stars in a one-man play at McCarter Theatre about life in a boarding house in 1950s Lackawana, N.Y.

By: Matt Smith
   Watching him in action, it’s readily apparent Lackawanna Blues isn’t simply another play to Ruben Santiago-Hudson.
   Just off the N.J. Transit train from his home in New York City, Mr. Santiago-Hudson walked into McCarter Theatre in Princeton last Thursday. Stopping only for a few warm-up riffs on his harmonica and a sip of water, he jumped into the first act of his one-man play at the late-morning rehearsal.
   There are some minor details to be worked out with director Loretta Greco and musical accompanist Bill Sims Jr. before the show opens Oct. 16, but Mr. Santiago-Hudson doesn’t forget a single line or falter in bringing any of the characters to life — the play is part of him.
   "It’s in my heart and it’s in my soul," he says. "I go on stage with my two harmonicas, two glasses of water and Bill Sims Jr., and I’m absolutely comfortable and safe as hell."
   Even though Lackawanna Blues is moving from the 141-seat Public Theater in New York City, where it premiered to great acclaim this spring, to the 1,000-plus seat space at McCarter, the Tony Award-winning actor (for Seven Guitars in 1996) says he’ll maintain a bare-bones approach that keeps the story front and center.
   "There’s a whole lot of nothing on stage," he says on a bench outside McCarter following the rehearsal, a few hints of gray evident in his close-cropped hair under the midday sun. "I don’t want the focus to be on anything but the story. You don’t know where I’m going to go, but I’m gonna go."
   He’s not kidding about the going part. For the entire 75-minute show, Mr. Santiago-Hudson is in constant motion, bringing the First Ward of 1950s Lackawanna, N.Y., and its colorful inhabitants to life. One moment he’s the hunched-over, lizard-tongued Mr. Taylor, a freed mental patient nearing the end of his journey. Next he’s bouncing back and forth jamming on the harmonica with Mr. Sims, seated to the side, joining in on acoustic guitar.
   All told, Mr. Santiago-Hudson voices about 40 characters, 20 of whom are fully fleshed out, presenting even the most uneducated and down-and-out of the lot with dignity and respect. There’s Freddie, Small Paul and Ol’ Po’ Carl, who’s given to malapropisms like "Entire State Building" and "Statue Delivery."
   Mr. Santiago-Hudson appears as "Junior," a younger version of himself, but he stands on the periphery because Lackawanna Blues is about boarding-house owner and community matriarch Rachel Crosby and her infinitely generous spirit.
   Ms. Crosby, whom the entire First Ward of Lackawanna knew as "Miss Rachel," or more simply, "Nanny," was the rock of the sometimes rough-and-tumble black neighborhood. She ran two boarding houses and, for a time, a hopping restaurant and nightclub. Nanny was also a travel agent and car service, helping family, friends and complete strangers migrate from the impoverished rural South to a place where the play’s narrator says, "You could get to town on a Monday and by Wednesday have more jobs than one man can take."
   Although many thrived in Lackawanna in the ’50s, most of Nanny’s tenants were mental patients, drifters, gangsters or addicts. She took them in, providing what she could, whether that was passage out of town for a woman fleeing an abusive relationship or just some of her famous Southern-fried cooking.
   A great many of those living life on the cusp were burdened by children they couldn’t take care of, so there were countless kids moving in and out of the boarding houses. Only one, however, was lucky enough to be raised by Nanny: Ruben Santiago-Hudson. She stepped in to fill the void left by his absent parents.
   "If my mother came to get me, my real birth mother, I wouldn’t go," he says. "I wouldn’t trade Nanny’s deal in for nobody. I loved being with her and what she had to offer. So I just stayed with her and fought and kicked and convinced everybody to stay with her."
   When it was time for young Ruben to start school, being half black and half Puerto Rican and living in a boarding house left him open to a lot of playground teasing.
   "I would come home as a child and she would say, ‘You’re special. They can call you whatever they want to call you,’ Nanny would say. ‘The bottom line is that there’s something about you that God chose you for and we’ll find out eventually what it is.’
   "I didn’t necessarily believe that at the time," he says. "I don’t know if I believe it now, but I do know that I have certain gifts and a lot to offer to the world."
   Even though the industry was drying up in Great Lakes industrial towns like Lackawanna by the early 1970s, and life in the First Ward got rougher, Mr. Santiago-Hudson assumed he’d enter the blue collar rank-and-file when he was old enough — but Nanny had other plans.
   "All the people that automatically had jobs just thought that life was growing up, you become a man, you get a job at the steel plant, you get a new car and a conk," he says. "That’s what I thought life was, but Nanny said, ‘No, you’re going to college.’
   "As I got closer to it I thought, ‘I’d like to go away to college, to meet different kinds of people, to see other kinds of things.’ And Nanny always persuaded — no, threatened — that I’d better go. So I did it. Whatever I thought would make her happy, I wanted to do."
   Mr. Santiago-Hudson studied at SUNY at Binghamton and then at Wayne State University in Detroit, but still lived in Lackawanna during holidays and summer vacations. As his stage career took off after school, and he moved to New York City and started a family, his trips back became less frequent. He did return home one day in 1989, sadly, to say good-bye to Nanny.
   "She said she had done more in her life than she had ever imagined, and she was happy and ready to go, so I let her go," he says. "She told me, ‘Go do your work. I’m proud of you,’ and that’s what I do. She stays with me, helps me, guides me and gives me the strength to keep going."
   In the past decade, work has meant everything from Henry VIII to a production of Glengarry Glen Ross at McCarter a few seasons back, plus numerous TV appearances and starring turns in big-budget films like The Devil’s Advocate and the Shaft remake.
   About three years ago, Mr. Santiago-Hudson began looking back at his youth and wondering why his life had turned out the way it had. At the behest of his theater friends, he wrote about it.
   "It became more vivid as I got older, needing to find out more about myself and why my life turned out the way it did," he says. "You discover me (in the play), you put it together."
   Thanks to the unflinching support of one saint of a woman, Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s life has turned out pretty well, and he intends to continue sharing Lackawanna Blues, and Nanny’s legacy, as long as he’s able to do so.
   "This play’s going to live forever, because it’s a piece of history, a minute and specific piece of history, but it’s a piece of history," he says. "On top of that, it’s something that people miss, remember and want; it’s about families, it’s about love, it’s about unconditional love and support. That’s not exclusive to blacks, that’s exclusive to people. It’s so general in that sense and so specific in that other sense. I think, if I can remember the words, I’ll be doing it when I’m 65."
Lackawanna Blues plays at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, Oct. 16-Nov. 4. Performances: Wed.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 4, 8:30 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m.; Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $23-$43. For information, call (609) 258-2787. On the Web: www.mccarter.org