Ma Rainey became known as the Mother of the Blues. Ida Cox was the uncrowned Queen of the Blues. Bessie Smith was the Empress of the Blues. After a while, you begin to run out of appellations. Midwife of the Blues? Dinner-lady of the Blues?
Here, in any case, are the Three Ages of the Blues: a triumvirate of sisters-in-suffering, all beholden to the same no-good, two-bit cheatin' snake of a man.
And this, in terms of a plot, is as far as Sheldon Epps's hot compilation of blues standards goes. Three dejected chanteuses, representing three stages of a woman's life, sit moping in their boudoirs waiting for the call of a local huckster (sleazily played by Ray Shell) whose taste for booty runs to small, medium and large.
But hey, when you've got sex, smoke and saxophone music floating through the air, who needs a story? Given a clutch of the finest jazz and blues tunes ever written, the only thing that matters is to belt them out like Bessie.
Geraldine Connor's sultry production is right on the money. Donna Odain is lithely impressive as the vulnerable ingenue, while Melanie La Barrie, in the middle of life's course, has the look - and sound - of Aretha Franklin, plus phrasing that reminds you of Ma Rainey's advice to the young Bessie Smith: "A tune's like a staircase, walk up on it."
Michael Vale's set, however, is a spiral and the cast slide about on it. At one point, the magnificent Hope Augustus, amply strapped into a leather corset and brandishing a riding crop, nearly took a tumble into a spectator's lap. A word of caution - do not book the front rows unless you're sure you can handle the excitement.
· Until January 24. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
