‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ Explores the Ways the Past Never Leaves Us

It all starts out quietly enough, with a group of musicians killing time before the arrival of Ma Rainey, their singer. They joke a little; they bicker. Levee (Noah-King Bates), the trumpet player, peacocks in a beautiful pair of brand-new shoes. The kid’s got ambition; he’s determined to start his own band—and determined that the one he’s stuck in now is going to play his arrangement of the titular song. You might laugh him off until you remember that levees sometimes break.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (onstage at . . .