Nija Okoro, Brandon Gill, Kai A. Ealy, Gerald C. Rivers, Alex Morris, Jessica Williams,Veralyn Jones and Briana James (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
A Noise Within
Through November 9
RECOMMENDED
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by Gregg T. Daniel at A Noise Within, may not be August Wilson’s strongest play. Surely Fences or The Piano Lesson, both Pulitzer winners, take pride of place in his oeuvre. By contrast, Turner tends to ramble in a peripatetic, stream-of-consciousness manner. Even so, the writing is richly discursive, brimming with the earthy humor, heightened emotionalism, and mystical elements that define Wilson’s style — and genius.
The production Is the sixth Wilson play that Daniel has directed at this venue. Here, he not only meets the challenges this particular work presents — he transcends them.
Set in 1911 in a Pittsburgh boarding house—stunningly realized in Tesshi Nakagawa’s set— Turner is, chronologically, the second play in Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, his chronicle of the African American experience, decade by decade, throughout the 20th century.
Boarding house owner Seth (Alex Morris) hosts a succession of rootless, marginalized individuals, who form a sadly impermanent family before moving on to uncertain futures. Seth’s wife, Bertha (Veralyn Jones), provides a matter-of-fact counterpoint to her bombastic, larger-than-life husband.
Seth augments his rent money by making pots and pans from the sheet metal regularly delivered by Rutherford Selig (Bert Emmett), a White man who also makes additional cash as a “finder,” hired to track down missing Black people for concerned families.
Selig does a brisk business, as most of the characters are preoccupied with “finding,” a resonant theme harking back to the separation of Black families during slave times. Jeremy (Brandon Gill) labors on the nearby road gang but is chiefly preoccupied with finding a woman. Mattie Campbell (Briana James) wants to find the man who recently abandoned her. Their problems appear solved when Jeremy persuades Mattie to be his woman — until he is bedazzled by Molly Cunningham (Nija Okoro), a flashy new tenant on the lookout to find her latest man while she is young and the pickings are good — or, in Jeremy’s case, the best on offer.
Seth’s longtime tenant Bynum (Gerald Rivers) got his name because he “binds” people together, an eerie ability that also evokes the lingering trauma of slavery, when families could be “unbound” and torn apart in a moment. A “Conjure Man” with supernatural powers, he is intent upon finding the mysterious “Shining Man” who led him into a strange and vibrant alternative reality.
However, the most determined seeker is Harold Loomis (Kai A. Ealy), who comes to stay at Seth’s place with his young daughter, Zonia (Jessica Williams). Loomis, who was arrested while preaching on the road for the sole “crime” of being Black, has completed a seven-year stint on Joe Turner’s chain gang. For the past four years, he has been looking for his wife Martha (Tori Danner), but although he hasn’t seen her in over a decade, he searches for her with frightening and sinister tenacity.
Rounding out the cast is Reuben (Jared Bennett), a young neighborhood boy who forms a sweet new friendship with Zonia.
Loss, separation, and Black disenfranchisement are central themes—as indeed, they are in so many of Wilson’s works. A scene that depicts Loomis’s terrifying and trancelike possession — in which he envisions an agonizing image of Black bones rising from turbulent waters — is reminiscent of the City of Bones sequence from Gem of the Ocean, chronologically the first offering in the Cycle. Both sequences echo the torturous ordeal of the Middle Passage, the slave ships transporting newly enslaved Africans to the Americas, with massive loss of life.
Daniel’s beautifully designed production, which includes Karyn Lawrence’s lighting, Kate Bergh’s costumes, and Jeff Gardner’s sound, all excellent, features stellar performers who are surely among the best you will see this season. All are superb, but Ealy is most mesmerizing as a glowering, menacing presence, lost in bitterness, who raises hackles every time he walks on stage. His Loomis has the internalized anguish of a man who has lost everything due to the random caprices and cruelty of a White man, but whose efforts to reconnect to his past may lead to redemption.
If Joe Turner’s Come and Gone sometimes meanders, this production turns its wanderings into revelations. What begins as a search for the missing ends as a testament to the power of self-discovery — and, in Daniel’s hands, to the enduring vitality of August Wilson’s vision.
A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. Thur.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 2 p.m., thru Nov. 9. (626) 356-3100. www.anoisewithin.org Running time: two hours and 40 minutes with an intermission.
