Two Trains Running
|
Avery, White, Russell, Gathegi
Photo by Craig Schwartz
|
By January Riddle
There are two trains running, as Memphis Lee tells it, to and from Jackson, Mississippi. That’s where the white man’s system took his land, slaughtered his only mule, and burned his small crop nearly 40 years ago.
Today, 1968, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Hill District, the city is about to take his restaurant through the white man’s process of eminent domain for something called redevelopment. His wife of 20 years has left him, and he’s about to do battle with the city for his rightful recompense.
As Two Trains Running, the late August Wilson’s 7th play in his 10-play chronicle of the American 20th Century black experience richly and expertly, sometimes even humorously, unfolds on the Old Globe Theatre stage, the restaurant regulars come and go. Each is running on her or his own life track, and the diner, perfectly designed and set by Tony Fanning, is a safe day-to-day rest stop. From here, their individual stories, hopes, dreams, and philosophies have a platform. They may have only a small intimate audience of each other, but they can count on some understanding and respect.
Wolf, an edgy numbers runner, is doing his business on the public phone just inside the door. Risa, a demoralized waitress, cook, and bottle-washer with self-scarred legs, is doing hers. Across the street, West’s Funeral Home is enjoying its best business in years as the townspeople line up to view the laid out body of Prophet Samuel, a man who evidently enjoyed as much financial success as preacher’s prestige in his lifetime. And Holloway, a neighborhood philosopher, explains the inconsistencies of life and people with equal expertise, using his own form of logic.
The laconic atmosphere changes quickly when Sterling, a young man just out of the penitentiary, bounds in the door looking for a meal, a woman, and a job in that order. His eager energy prompts Holloway to suggest a visit to Aunt Esther, a local spiritual healer aged 322 years. Sterling takes the suggestion, bounding out the door as quickly as he came in, but Memphis derides what he sees as ancestral superstition.
He and Holloway are debating the unanswerable when the obviously addled Hambone interrupts, reciting his demand for a ham that Lutz, the butcher down the street, owes him for a fence he painted years ago. And in the first two scenes, the major threads of the play’s tapestry are on the loom.
Sometimes called “the black Shakespeare,” playwright August Wilson crafted characters and scenes with his own 3-Rs of dialogue: real, rich, and revealing. Reading an August Wilson play is almost as satisfying as seeing it on stage, such is the beauty and poetry of a language that paints a time and place as surely as it portrays each person speaking it. And, without exception, each of the actors in this production has taken the truth and beauty to heart.
Carefully and intimately directed by Seret Scott, this production glows, shedding light on each story as it shines alone, then weaves, at its own time and pace, into the greater image.
Wolf, skillfully played by Montae Russell with a self-satisfied exterior that belies an inner longing, wants to live and let live. He has heart, but no woman, and he both wants and doesn’t want that commitment in his carpe diem days. Samuel L. Jackson played this character in the play’s original 1990 production at Yale Repertory Theatre.
Larry Fishburn won a Tony for his portrayal of the original Sterling, and it is difficult to imagine his timing and exuberance rivaled that of Edi Gathegi in the Globe’s current run. Like a young adult with ADD, Gathegi’s Sterling is both charming and annoying as he badgers the others about attending a Malcolm X memorial rally and a reluctant Risa into romance. Roslyn Ruff is up to the challenge, if sometimes a bit too languorous in her interpretation of a woman hurt too many times by others to care much about one man. But she and Gathegi have a chemistry that culminates in a wonderful loving dance.
The play is really Memphis’ story, and Chuck Cooper takes it every which way it needs to go. A character determined not to be taken advantage of again by the white system, he is at times a steamroller, at others a temporary tyrant. But he is never beaten down or pathetic, even when he recalls the brutality of the men who slaughtered his only mule and stole his land.
His stoicism is highlighted by the character of poor Hambone, whose consistent demands for his ham from Lutz are amazingly unirritating, despite the constant recitation of a one-liner. Willie Carpenter’s sensitive portrayal showcases the wretchedness wrought from Lutz’s abuse of power.
But the way that Holloway explains it, Hambone’s actions are self-empowering, for Hambone has not given up nor given in. Thanks to James Avery’s incredible portrayal of this arm-chair philosopher from a wheelchair, this and all other seemingly implausible explanations of life actually make sense. Just admire the business he employs with the sugar, salt, and pepper containers on a tabletop as he explains the connections between slavery and today’s black workers.
And as the funeral director West, symbol of black business success in today’s world, Al White brings dimension to a character that could be a caricature. It's interesting to note that White created the role of Memphis Lee at Yale and won the Theatre World Award for Outstanding New Talent on Broadway for his performance.
Together this cast pulls the stories’ threads into a rope of tension and holds it strongly to the surprising end. Everyone’s story has come out. Each of them has endured the life they’ve had, their philosophies a product of how they played or didn’t play the numbers they were dealt. Sometimes they won.
As West says, “Life’s hard, but it ain’t impossible.” Just like life and death, the trains run both ways.
***
Two Trains Running by August Wilson plays at The Old Globe in San Diego’s Balboa Park through May 27.
Curtain times: Sun/Tue/Wed 7 pm; Thu/Fri/Sat 8 pm; Sat/Sun matinees 2 pm
Tickets: $19-$62
(619) 23-GLOBE
|
