AugustWilson.net
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"They're all about the same things, love, honor, duty, betrayal ..."
-- August Wilson about his Pittsburgh plays.
NEW YORK -- The 20th century begins with a thunderous nighttime knock on a stout wooden door at 1839 Wylie Ave. in the Hill District.
That's how it starts in "Gem of the Ocean," August Wilson's robust new drama
of questing characters and changing times, set in 1904 when the legacy of
slavery was a living memory. "Gem" thus takes its place at the start of Wilson's
20th-Century Cycle, with which he has dramatized the history, anger and
aspirations of black Americans with a play set in every decade of the 20th
century except its last.
Nine thematically linked plays over 21 years, all but one staged on Broadway, the other with an extended run off-Broadway -- that's an extraordinary record. But for Wilson's cycle, a New York run is just a fancy shop window. Its real home is the American theater, country wide and for years to come.
"Gem" has the usual Wilson mix of comedy, drama and stories, but it moves quicker than most, with heightened drama and high stakes. Revolution looms in Wilson's 1904 Pittsburgh -- blacks against whites, new arrivals against those
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already there, mill owners against their hands and greed against the greater good. Pittsburgh is not alone. The post-slavery migration of blacks northward is being bottled up, as Southern states see their cheap field labor leaving and terrorize them to stay. Meanwhile, people in Monongahela Valley steel towns say they'd go to war to bring back slavery.
Historians can pass on the accuracy of this, but I can vouch for the drama. Although "Gem" is the youngest of the nine plays in one sense, it is obviously the oldest in another, with an old soul personified in the legendary Aunt Ester, wise Christian shaman of the tribe. We've heard of Aunt Ester before, as the mysterious healer spoken of in "Two Trains Running" (set in 1969) who then dies in "King Hedley II" (set in 1985).
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Amid the 1904 turmoil, Ester's home at 1839 Wylie is "a house of peace," as Eli, her careful doorkeeper, announces. It is a sanctuary. But through its doors pass four people on troubled quests.
First is Black Mary (LisaGay Hamilton), a strong, angry young woman who arrived a couple of years earlier as a laundress and now serves as housekeeper while she and Ester figure out her role in life. Her male equivalent is the young and confused Citizen Barlow (John Earl Jelks), a new arrival from down South, the mud still fresh on the clodhoppers that everyone comments on. He feels he has done a terrible thing and has come to have Aunt Ester "wash his soul."
The most fiery quester is Solly (Anthony Chisholm), once Uncle Albert, then known as Two Kings (which he prefers), both David and Solomon, warrior and judge. Solly is 67. In 1857, he escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad to Canada, then went back to save 67 others before turning his hand to guiding Union troops through the backwoods he knew so well. He lives off the land, which, in 1904 Pittsburgh means collecting dog manure and selling it to canny gardeners, but he's ready to head back South in a revival of the railroad of his youth.
The most troubled guest at Aunt Ester's is Caesar (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), Black Mary's brother. He's moved from the shady side of the law to become its embodiment, a sheriff who keeps the black folks in line for the mill owners and white bosses on Grant Street. He makes plenty for himself, too, through flop houses and a dubious bakery. In his quest for money and power, Caesar is the advocate of the property owner's law and contemptuous of other blacks.
Aunt Ester (Phylicia Rashad) has a quest as well, to find her successor. When she dies in 1985, she is said to be 366 years old -- born, that is, the year the first shipment of black slaves arrived in Virginia. Here, she is only 285. But we realize she is actually one of a line of priestesses, each training a successor. If Black Mary accepts the charge, it will be she (over 100) who dies in 1985, or perhaps her successor. (We have to await Wilson's 1990s play to find out if there is another.)
Eli (Eugene Lee) was an Underground Railroader like Solly, but he is a caretaker now, with priestly duties, busy building a wall against the Caesars of the world. The sympathetic white man, the first in Wilson's work (as Caesar is the first thorough black villain), is Rutherford Selig (Raynor Scheine), the same peddler who we know less positively from "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," set in 1911.
At 2 1/2 hours including intermission, "Gem" moves briskly. Much happens: A man dies evading capture for a crime he didn't commit, a mill burns, guns are drawn. All of this riles the waters at Ester's, but the play's signature scene is early in Act 2 when Ester, Solly, Eli and Black Mary conduct Citizen Barlow (telling name) on a terrifying journey to the City of Bones, the mid-Atlantic repository of the bodies of the African slaves who died in the middle passage.
It's a shining city, gruesome and grand, as described in the folk song, "12 Gates to the City." The journey demands Barlow relive the slave crossing, but he emerges with his soul fresh, ready to join the struggle. In what follows, "Gem" approaches frank melodrama with villain and heroes, but its roots go deep into history and truth.
Throughout the play, Wilson's symbolism is rich -- the strong Christian references such as the bucket of nails Barlow steals, the water imagery, the use made of Ester's slave bill of sale and the suggestive details (Solly's cape and stick, Ester's shawl and beads) of Constanza Romero's costumes. David Gallo's blue-green set, especially as washed by Donald Holder's lights and with Dan Moses Schreier's ship sounds, easily turns into the pitiless, healing ocean on which there once sailed a slave ship called Gem of the Ocean.
The glamorous Rashad, who astonished Broadway last year by aging into the grandmother in "Raisin," ages easily here into the ageless Ester. With a twinkle and passionate tears as needed, she initiates Barlow, Mary and a willing audience into the heart of the mysteries. Chisholm is a rich, craggy Solly, and Santiago-Hudson a vivid force as Caesar, making the most of the monologue where we learn how he has been created by the world he deals with.
Hamilton is a feisty Mary, furious on cue, a woman to desire and a priestess in the making. Jelks is a find, touching in his bewilderment and inspiring in his discovery of vocation. Scheine is a gritty peddler and Lee an appealing aide de camp.
"O Columbia! the gem of the ocean," goes the hymn: "The home of the brave and the free."
Wilson's title is ironic, of course; America's promise has not been extended equally to all. But the City of Bones is a gem of the ocean, too, talisman of a tragic history polished by remembrance. That's the constant Wilson theme: Honor the past to make the future possible.
Nine down and the '90s to go.
"Gem" is at the Walter Kerr Theatre, 218 W. 48 St.; call 1-800-432-7250.
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