Steppenwolf’s ‘Leroy and Lucy’ beguilingly reinvents a blues myth

“Leroy and Lucy” — 3.5 stars

Mythologies inevitably build up around innovative artists who become legends beyond their lifetimes. Playwright Ngozi Anyanwu is astutely aware of this in her entrancing world-premiere play “Leroy and Lucy” for Steppenwolf Theatre, which finds inspiration from the influential blues musician and songwriter Robert Johnson (1911-1938).

“Leroy and Lucy” zeroes in on the oft-told tall tale about Johnson, who supposedly met with the devil at a highway crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. In exchange for his soul, Johnson would become a brilliant blues musician — but ultimately suffer an abbreviated life.

With that in mind, you initially question that Anyanwu might be a little too on the nose with her two-actor play. After all, the journeying musician Leroy gets lured by the siren singing and guitar strumming of a beautifully talented woman named Lucy. Is “Lucy” obviously short for “Lucifer”?

But instead of recycling the same old Faustian-bargain storyline, “Leroy and Lucy” expansively questions sources of divine inspiration. And, more importantly, Anyanwu asks what drives artists to shun self-doubt in creating truthful works that might stand the test of time, despite personal moral failings or overwhelming odds that can be stacked against them.

Anyanwu grounds all these lofty questions with very funny and earthy dialogue, especially as the alluring Brittany Bradford as Lucy begins a beguiling get-to-know-you flirtation with Steppenwolf ensemble member Jon Michael Hill as Leroy. As acting two-handers go, Bradford and Hill have all the goods to not only finesse all the nuances out of great back-and-forth banter, but also the necessary chops vocally and with musical instruments to show the flickers of future greatness.

Director Awoye Timpo skillfully guides Hill and Bradford through the shifting moods of Anyanwu’s engrossing script. Timpo has also assembled a great in-the-round design team for “Leroy and Lucy” to achieve a mix of naturalism that spins into fantasy and back.

The spectral lighting design from Heather Gilbert mixes well with a mysterious soundscape of crickets and reverberations by sound designer Connor Wang. Gilbert and Wang’s work both help to immediately create the feeling of a hot and humid night encounter.

The scenic designer also creates an amorphous playing area, which could easily be interpreted as an abstracted Mississippi mud plain or the brain folds of a dreaming artist. The play’s false ending also allows costume designer Yvonne L. Miranda to offer some more variety beyond an expected early 20th-century period approach to the outfits.

With “Leroy and Lucy,” Anyanwu provides a new theatrical spin on a legendary American blues musician whose artistic impact has been subsumed by generations of songwriters and guitarists who have followed in his footsteps. But more vitally, “Leroy and Lucy” prods audiences to question who gets to be in control of the storytelling behind the music greats who go onto achieve a kind of immortality that ultimately keeps their memory alive.

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Location: Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1646 N. Halsted St., Chicago, (312) 335-1650, steppenwolf.org

Times: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (no 7:30 p.m. shows Nov. 6, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 28 or Dec. 10); 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (extra 2 p.m. matinee Wednesday, Nov. 27); through Dec. 15

Running time: About 90 minutes without intermission

Parking: Area parking garages and limited metered street parking

Tickets: $20-$92

Rating: For ages 12 and older; some innuendo, profanity and racial epithets