‘Side Man’: When the Trumpets Fade

In a sharp, pungently atmospheric way, Warren Leight’s “Side Man” does what the Ken Burns documentary “Jazz” took untold hours longer to accomplish. Without sentimentality--and with an actual sense of humor--it salutes and personalizes the music so vital to so many.

The 1999 Tony Award winner, now making its Southern California premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, knows the score. It’s a play that feels firsthand; it relays what life was like for jazz sidemen, the guys located just to the left or right of the spotlight.

Behind those guys lurked dim outlines of wives, children, a deferred dream or three. This is the stuff Leight has to work with, as the son of a musician and the product of a rickety, difficult marriage. He has made a good play of it.

Even with some casting issues, director Andrew J. Robinson’s staging likewise knows the score.

And there’s a bonus. In addition to the copious and splendid recorded jazz integral to the play--none more copiously splendid than trumpeter Clifford Brown’s “A Night in Tunisia,” the focal point of “Side Man’s” most famous scene--there’s original music by Peter Erskine, prerecorded by a quintet that becomes the voice of the musicians we’re hanging out with.

This is a hanging-out play in the best sense, in which the best scenes are the least plot-dependent. Narrator Clifford (JD Cullum) addresses the audience, in the year 1985 in New York City. His recessive trumpeter father Gene (Dennis Christopher) and his explosively irrational mother, “Crazy Terry” (Mare Winningham) have split. Clifford hasn’t seen Gene in five years. En route to the Melody Lounge for a surprise visit, Clifford revisits his own life and imagines scenes from his parents’ courtship in the 1950s, before he came “on the scene.”

The other sidemen, whistling in the dark while their livelihood dwindles due to rock ‘n’ roll, include Al (Gareth Williams), the resident Romeo; heroin addict Jonesy (Daniel Reichert), the only one who can follow Terry’s oftentimes circuitous logic; and Ziggy (Ethan Phillips), an energetic joker with a truly impressive lisp. Melody Lounge waitress Patsy (Lee Garlington) is a well-worn jazz groupie, a one-woman version of “La Ronde.” As Gene--nicknamed “Turtle”--says, “She’s married three trumpet players in a row, so she must think there’s some future in it.”

There isn’t, really. The passing of jazz’s heyday provides “Side Man” with a mournful comic quality. At her wedding reception, Terry asks Jonesy if he thinks Gene will “make it” as a trumpeter. The reply: “Honey. He’s made it. This is it.”

Clifford is depicted by Leight as full-time mediator for his battling parents. (Frustratingly, “Side Man” over-relies on its narrator’s observations, rather than what he’s observing.) Act 2, more conventional than Act 1, bears down on the marital discord, and in Terry’s foulmouthed attacks, the tone wobbles between the truly painful and the painfully funny.

Most of “Side Man” blends the two strains artfully. Cullum is quite good as Clifford--with reservations. He’s a skillful actor, but not one for understatement, and awfully busy from the neck up. (Some of Leight’s best wisecracks would be better off with a wry touch.)

On the other hand, Winningham’s earnest, thoughtful and often affecting Terry lacks an inner core of danger. It’s a self-effacing performance, at this point more geared for film or television-scale work. It’s also very heavy on the Baaahston dialect, which in turn seems to affect Christopher’s own dialect work as Gene. Christopher does well, though. The star of “Breaking Away” is aptly cast and shrewdly specific as a fogged-in man who, as Terry says, will “never age--nothing gets to him.”

Two of the supporting performances outdo their Broadway equivalents. Phillips deploys crack timing and a natural rhythmic ear as Ziggy, and Reichert’s a first-rate Jonesy, a sweet lost soul. (On Broadway these roles were caricatured, egged on by Michael Mayer’s cartoonish direction; the world of jazz appeared to be peopled by hyperactive 8-year-olds.)

Leight’s newer jazz-themed play, “Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine,” had a production earlier this year at the Mark Taper Forum. (It opens next Tuesday at the Manhattan Theatre Club.) The difference between “Side Man” and “Glimmer” is the difference between Barry Levinson’s films “Diner” and, say, “Liberty Heights.” The latter is a consciously personal work that feels schematic; the former is an easefully personal one that feels fresh.

Tellingly, Leight knows when to let the music do the talking. In Act 2, the aging sidemen listen to a recording of Brown’s “Night in Tunisia” trumpet solo. The conversation stops. There’s nothing to say. They’re listening to their calling, explained.

* “Side Man,” Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 9 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends June 17. $15-$42.50. (626) 356-PLAY. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.

JD Cullum: Clifford

Mare Winningham: Terry

Lee Garlington: Patsy

Dennis Christopher: Gene

Gareth Williams: Al

Ethan Phillips: Ziggy

Daniel Reichert: Jonesy

Written by Warren Leight. Directed by Andrew J. Robinson. Scenic design by John Iacovelli. Costumes by Maggie Morgan. Lighting by J. Kent Inasy. Sound by Stafford M Floyd. Original music by Peter Erskine. Production stage manager Heidi Swartz.