August Wilson: Gem of the Ocean

When: 4/24/08
Where: McGuire Proscenium Stage at the Guthrie

Writing for the Strib, Rohan Preston called Gem of the Ocean "coruscating." I had to look it up. The word means "to gleam with intermittent flashes: glitter, sparkle." It fits this production of the first play in August Wilson's Century Cycle—not the first he wrote, but the first chronologically in his series of ten plays, one for each decade of the 20th century.

Set in 1904, Gem is moving, mysterious, and profound. Is Aunt Ester really 287 years old? What happens to make Caesar treat his own people with such brutality? Can Citizen Barlow's soul be washed? Will Black Mary follow in Ester's footsteps? This is a Penumbra production, but it would have been too big for its home stage in the Halle Q. Brown/Dr. Martin Luther King Community Center; it needs the room it gets on the proscenium stage in the blood-red McGuire theater. (This is the reddest room I have ever been in. The walls are red, the seats are red--are the floors red? I think they are.)

There is one scene in particular, during which Ester leads Citizen and the other characters to the City of Bones, built from the bodies of slaves who died during the Middle Passage, where the action and the lighting would not have worked in a smaller space. During this wrenching and powerful scene, a woman seated in front of us quietly sobbed.

Austene Van plays the role of Black Mary, Aunt Ester's assistant. I'm convinced Van is really triplets, or at least twins; she's also director of two more shows still playing in St. Paul, Blues in the Night and Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, and she's understudy for Aunt Ester.

When I interviewed Van for my MinnPost column on Lady Day, I asked her how she ended up doing all of these things at once:

It's what we do as actors. We usually take on a few things, and I can kind of sum it up like this: "Being a woman is hard work. Not without joy or even ecstasy, but relentless, unending work." Maya Angelou said that. Yeah, I'm tired, and yeah, this is not easy, but I love it, I love going to work, and I budget my time and try to take care of myself and focus. You make time for what you love.

Many of the plays Van is involved with (including, previously, Ain't Misbehavin', Dinah Was, Blue, and Black Nativity) have music at their core. I asked if she sought that out or it just happened:

People seek me out to direct them or be in them or choreograph them.... I'm in half and half, half straight plays, half musical, but I always find rhythm. I'm always in something that has rhythm. Culturally, everything we do stems out of some kind of rhythm, how we walk and talk, how we communicate. It's jazz.

She noted that Gem is full of the rhythm of Wilson's language:

We try to be mindful about being spot-on with our words. Change one word and the rhythm is off.

I read the play before I saw it (truthfully, I finished the final act during intermission). That and talking with Van made me more conscious of the rhythm of the words.

Coincidence: My friend Jennifer Nelson, who led the African Continuum Theatre Company in Washington, DC for many years, is currently directing Gem of the Ocean at Everyman Theater in Baltimore. Read about it in the Baltimore Sun.

August Wilson: The Piano Lesson

When: 3/12/08
Where: Penumbra Theatre

August Wilson "considered Penumbra the place to hang up his hat," his widow Constanza Romero Wilson told the Pi Press last week. She was in town to see Penumbra's most recent production of The Piano Lesson, one of two Pulitzer Prize winners that Wilson wrote while living in St. Paul.

Penumbra has had a long and close relationship with Wilson's plays, a cycle that traces black American life decade by decade from 1900 to 2000. Over the next five years, the theatre will produce all ten. The Piano Lesson is first, to be followed by Gem of the Ocean, which will be hosted by the Guthrie Theater.

When Penumbra stages an August Wilson play, we go. To date, we've seen everything but Gem of the Ocean, most at Penumbra. (We saw Radio Golf last June at Broadway's Cort Theatre, thanks to an email from Penumbra announcing a half-price ticket offer. The email arrived the same day we checked into our hotel, which happened to be about three blocks from the Cort. It was as if God had leaned down to say SEE THE PLAY.)

I hadn't seen The Piano Lesson before tonight. It's a long play—three hours—with a lot going on: history, ghosts, drama, comedy, fear, resentment, family tension, hopes, dreams, disappointment. Here's the summary Penumbra provides on its Web site (but, oddly, not in the printed program):

The piano that sits in the salon of the Charles home is very valuable. For Berniece, it holds the spirit of her grandparents, sold away in exchange for it during slavery. For her brother, Boy Willie, it holds the key to his freedom from the burden of sharecropping for a meager wage. The struggle between the siblings over the symbolic and literal value of the piano escalates into a conflict that threatens to tear the family apart. A Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, The Piano Lesson is the story of a family haunted by the living legacy of American slavery.

Penumbra's set is utterly convincing and complete with a working kitchen; stove burners light and water comes out of the faucet. Greta Oglesby and James Craven are strong as Berniece and her uncle, Doaker Charles. (Oglesby can sing. More, please.)

Recent Howard University graduate Ashford Thomas is amazing as Lymon in his Penumbra debut. And Dennis Spears inhabits the role of Wining Boy. Most people in these parts know Spears as a jazz singer. He's also a wonderful actor.

T. Mychael Rambo was cast as preacher Avery Brown; the night we saw the play, Terry Bellamy stepped into the role and did just fine.

As key character Boy Willie, Anska Akyea dominated most of the scenes he was in. Strib writer Rohan Preston described him as "incendiary and tempestuous.... Loud, rude, he is a metaphor for a restless, impatient future." He pounded, bounded, and slammed his way through the play.

Near the end, when Boy Willie speaks several lengthy passages, Akyea's delivery was so loud and rapid-fire that I lost much of what he was saying. I wish he had slowed down and ramped down a bit.

Other than that, the play was perfect. And I loved the woman sitting by herself right in front of us who told us during intermission that Spears goes to her church, then punctuated Act II with over-the-shoulder comments and asides.

Piano photo from Penumbra's Web site.

A box set of all 10 August Wilson plays is available from Theatre Communications Group.