August Wilson was a largely unknown writer when Ma Rainey's Black Bottom brought him national renown nearly two decades ago. It's taken Arena Stage a while to get around to this seminal work. Now that it has, director Tazewell Thompson has mounted an uneven production that, despite some vibrant moments, doesn't put enough trust in Wilson's words.

Although Wilson named his play for Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues isn't the main character. She doesn't even show up until the last third of the first act. But her presence permeates the play, in terms of plot as well as themes.

The action is set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, where Ma and her band are making a record. The play is concerned more with the band than Ma, however. In what has come to be one of Wilson's stylistic signatures, each of the band's four musicians - Cutler (trombone), Slow Drag (bass), Toledo (piano) and Levee (trumpet) - delivers spoken arias, which are threaded together like solo riffs in a blues number.

Music - and the thematic notion of characters coming to grips with their own "song," or identity - runs through all of Wilson's work. And one of director Thompson's best touches is the way he accentuates the play's musical aspects. For example, when Clinton Derricks-Carroll launches into his longest monologue (about a man who sold his soul to the devil), he accompanies himself on the bass.

Derricks-Carroll steals this scene and a number of others. He's wonderful to watch - whether he's imitating Ma singing "Hear Me Talking to You" or just propping his feet up and savoring a toke on a borrowed reefer. But he also throws the focus of the show, whose action turns on the thwarted ambitions of the band's hot-headed young trumpet player, Levee.

If Ma's music, which Levee denigrates as "old jug-band" style, represents the legacy of the past, Levee's toe-tapping compositions are the jazzy wave of the future. But in his haste to get to the future, Levee disregards his heritage, and that blatant disregard leads to the play's violent ending.

Gavin Lawrence, an actor who is short in stature, is Arena's Levee, a role that was created on Broadway by the imposing Charles S. Dutton (the former Baltimorean will reprise his career-making role on Broadway in February opposite Whoopi Goldberg). Because Dutton put such a strong stamp on the character, casting an entirely different physical type isn't a bad idea.

The script has several references comparing Levee to a rooster, and Lawrence plays him like a bantam, forever strutting and crowing. In Lawrence's interpretation, however, Levee's vanity seems greater than his determination. After the play's explosive climax, instead of still bristling with rage, Lawrence's Levee dissolves like a frightened child, altering the tone of the ending considerably.

This isn't the production's only questionable choice. Thompson's direction occasionally veers toward the overtly presentational, particularly when Derricks-Carroll takes command of the stage and plays directly to the audience. It's a justifiable style for a play about performers, and one that could add an intriguing resonance to the action. But Thompson uses it too inconsistently to be effective.

Of the other cast members, Frederick Strother, a company member at Everyman Theatre, distinguishes himself as Toledo, the philosophizing piano player whose thoughtful, reasoned attitude is the polar opposite of Levee's brash impatience. As Cutler, the trombone player, Hugh Staples takes a little too long to come into his own.

But Tina Fabrique delivers a solid, grounded performance as Ma Rainey, a woman who knows where, when and how to exert her hard-won influence, and also knows the limits of that influence. And, Fabrique has a rich singing voice with a delicious growl in the low register.

The portrayals of the white characters are a prime example of the director's failure to trust the script. Irvin, Ma's manager, and especially Sturdyvant, the studio head, are written as bad guys. But Thompson turns them into caricatures by adding such overstated business as showing Timmy Ray James' Sturdyvant wiping his hands with a handkerchief after putting money in Levee's pocket or having Hugh Nees' Irvin confuse the names of Ma's musicians.

Such shortcomings aside, Thompson's take on Ma Rainey's Black Bottom still lets us see the foundation of Wilson's monumental, decade-by-decade chronicle of 20th century African-American life. Recognizing your roots is a major theme in that chronicle. Arena's production recognizes its roots, even if it falls short of exalting them.

On Stage

What: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Where: Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. S.W., Washington

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; matinees at 2:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. most Sundays and noon selected Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Through Dec. 29

Tickets: $34-$52

Call: 202-488-3300