AugustWilson.net
African American history and mythology collide in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean; they spill into each other and all over a young black man named Citizen Barlow who has come north from Alabama to Pittsburgh in 1904, away from a newly energized Klan and in search of that elusive thing—freedom—that his people have been striving toward throughout the four decades since emancipation. Almost immediately upon arrival he finds himself in trouble, and so he seeks out the legendary ancient Aunt Ester (who will be a familiar presence to viewers of other Wilson plays). She understands the nature and the roots of his spiritual crisis and helps him through it by taking him on a voyage through his heritage that cleanses his soul and strengthens his resolve.
Aunt Ester, who the press release says is 287 years old, is just one of the archetypal figures occupying the extraordinary Pittsburgh parlor where Gem of the Ocean takes place and where Citizen comes to discover what his name and birthright are all about. Another is Solly Two Kings, a former slave who escaped to Canada in the 1850s and then worked with Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad; now well advanced in years himself, he makes a living selling dog manure and earns his keep telling stories about a courageous career whose victories are literally recorded as notches in his gnarled walking stick.
And another is Caesar, a representative of a new generation of American Negro, one not brought up in bondage but instead in pursuit of a distorted and bastardized American Dream. He has trampled on the backs of his brethren to become rich: he now owns the mill where most of the neighborhood's black men work (and where he tries in vain to break up a union he can no longer countenance now that he's the boss); he's also landlord to most of his workers, one with the soul (and taste for self-aggrandizing power trips) of, say, Donald Trump.
Which of these men is truly free? That's one of the questions at the heart of this complicated, dense, intimately epic play. Another is how does your history define you: do you live through it, or past it? Can you simply deny it? Can you ignore it?
Citizen Barlow comes calling on Aunt Ester because everyone in town tells him she's the one can cure his ailing soul. He joins a household whose regular members include Black Mary, Caesar's sister, now more or less estranged from his ways if not his person; and Eli, a contemporary of Solly Two Kings whose current project is erecting a fence between this house and the one next door, which belongs to Caesar. Solly drops by from time to time, as does Rutherford Selig, a white man, an itinerant peddler who has become a friend to the residents here. All will figure, one way or another, in Aunt Ester's project to clean Citizen's soul and lead him on a path toward redemption.
That endeavor climaxes in a remarkable, possibly supernatural journey to the City of Bones, which is quite literally a leap of faith that this young African American man makes, guided by his elders and his ancestors, to (re)discover his slave roots. Wilson blends the mythic and the natural rather daringly here in a scene that maybe doesn't quite work but is nevertheless unforgettable. In his risk taking and barrier breaking, Wilson stands alone and above his contemporaries among well-established American playwrights, and for that we must all be grateful.
I have reservations about this production of Gem of the Ocean. The design is impeccable, especially the set by David Gallo, which is dominated by a massive staircase that just goes up and up at stage right, a giant visual metaphor for a lot of what's going on in Wilson's play. But the direction by Kenny Leon feels a little sluggish and underdone: big moments that ought to reverberate grandly pass by like blips on a screen; we miss these guideposts that would mark out Gem's majestic course if they were there. The cast is uneven: Phylicia Rashad is gloriously life-embracing and appealing as Aunt Ester, but she doesn't quite have the timeless, ageless quality that the role seems to require, and as a result the play's climax didn't feel as magical as I thought it could. LisaGay Hamilton is quietly proud and stately as Black Mary and Eugene Lee and Anthony Chisholm register strongly as Eli and Solly; Raynor Scheine is solidly resourceful and sympathetic as Selig. But I never understood how Ruben Santiago-Hudson's Caesar had gotten to be the man he is; nor did John Earl Jelks convince me that he had really seen the City of Bones.
Now, I think some of my particular experience is owed to an oddly out-of-sorts karma that pervaded the Walter Kerr Theatre the night I saw the play—it was one of those performances where patrons kept coughing and shifting in their seats and cell phones kept ringing all night long. Actors can feel and hear this; I know I didn't see the show at its best. Give Gem of the Ocean your attention, then, not least because it's that absolute rarity: an original American play on Broadway that seeks to enlarge and challenge its audience.
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