Photo of Gregg T. Daniel by Diana Ragland

Whisps of Optimism in Tragedy

Director Gregg T. Daniel on August Wilson’s King Hedley II at A Noise Within

By Steven Leigh Morris

The central question in a production of any play, serious or unserious, is how it resonates with contemporary times.

August Wilson’s King Hedley II, the ninth entry in Wilson’s ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle — a.k.a. the American Century Cycle — premiered on Broadway over two decades ago, in 2001. It featured Brian Stokes Mitchell and Leslie Uggams. The play, set in 1985, reflects on then-president Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics, and how that impacts the title character, a felon, trying to recover his life after his release from prison. Can he stay “clean?” Will the rules of the road permit him to do so? And what, if anything, has changed since 1985?

(Wilson died in October, 2005.)

The play is remerging this week at A Noise Within, where it’s directed by Gregg T. Daniel, a man who is no stranger to Wilson’s opus: Of the ten-play cycle, this will mark the fifth play by Wilson that Daniel has staged. (He directed Fences at Long Beach’s International City Theatre, and, for A Noise Within, he has staged Gem of the Ocean, Seven Guitars, Radio Golf and, now, King Hedley II.)

“He was in despair,” Daniel says, referring to Wilson’s sensitivities when he wrote Hedley. “He thought we [the African-American community] were on the verge of annihilation. Let Daniel count the ways: “Black-on-Black crime, the incarceration of Black men, crack cocaine, the school-to-prison pipeline, the gun culture which has only grown.”

Daniel says all of this in a remarkably animated tone, almost in a tone of enthusiasm, or at least excitement, that would seem to border on the perverse. But it’s not, and he’s not, because in the play, Daniel finds a source of “renewal.” Other words that Daniel uses to describe Wilson’s ultimate intent: “redemption,” “resurrection.”

The central character “does have an epiphany.” Wilson’s dramatic template is an ancient Greek template and yet, in this play, Wilson turns that template on its head. And that’s what excites Daniel.

The ancient classical structure suggests a caution against a hubris, a caution against never-ending and nonsensical cycles of vengeance, which always unfold.

In Hedley, however, things take a different turn. The title character (here played by Aaron Jennings, see Stage Raw’s review), is trying to re-build his life after a seven-year prison sentence, but resorts to stealing stolen refrigerators for a down payment on a loan to help subsidize a video store he hopes to own.

“He’ll never get a loan,” Daniel opines.

Amid his rage, Hedley has reason to kill an opponent, good reason by remedial standards of self-preservation. Instead, “he has an epiphany,” Daniel explains. What one would expect from Hedley, and what is justified, given his circumstances, doesn’t happen. He arises above. Or at least, he’s on the road to rising above.

It’s a transcendent moment invoking Gandhi and Martin Luther King, amidst a world on fire.

“To own your past is to determine your future,” Daniel explains.

Those familiar with other plays in Wilson’s cycle may recognize recurring characters, particularly from Seven Guitars.

Has anything gotten better since 1985? I ask.

“Well, things are definitely fucked up, but I’m a glass half-full kind of guy,” he says. “We saw some changes after the George Floyd killing.”

“But there were killings every week leading up to that, and nothing,” I counter. “What made George Floyd such a turning point?”

“We were all home with Covid,” Daniel says. “Everybody watched it on TV. I think that was the difference. And it did make a difference.”

Finally, I asked him about his directorial approach to a play and a playwright so embedded in the culture, and America’s theater culture.

“Well, I’m not a radical from the German Expressionist school,” Daniel says. “But I’m also not interested in creating a museum piece. I’m accenting certain elements in this production, but to do that, I’m guided by the play itself, elements inside the play. Here, for instance, dirt. I’ve tried to build a motif around dirt. I’ll take dramatic license, but that license has to come from Wilson. I do trust Wilson.”

What gives Daniel his optimism comes partly from audience responses: “Oh, that was my family. That was my dad. . . There’s a common-ness,” he says. Something that binds.

“People go to the theater to wrestle with these themes,” Daniel concludes. “To sit in a room of strangers, and suddenly, you feel this spiritual awakening. . . Yeah, I’m a glass half-full kind of guy.”

King Hedley II is being performed at A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena; Thurs., 7:30 p.m. (Dark Thur. April 18.); Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m. (No matinee April 6 and no evening performance April 27); Sun., 2 p.m. Ends April 28. (626) 356-3100. www.anoisewithin.org  2 hours and 50 minutes with intermission.