{"id":21059,"date":"2015-08-22T13:22:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-22T20:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=21059"},"modified":"2021-05-25T15:10:29","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T22:10:29","slug":"drama-about-blacks-in-the-60s-reflects-todays-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/drama-about-blacks-in-the-60s-reflects-todays-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Drama about blacks in the \u201860s reflects today\u2019s news"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1\/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]\n

[Woody’s [rating: 3.5]<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Risa (Beverly McGriff) and Bennie Lewis (Memphis, right) get caught up in the musings of Sterling (Keita Jones) in \u201cTwo Trains Running.\u201d Photo by Steven Wilson.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cTwo Trains Running\u201d is a rear view peek at America\u2019s racial turmoil that concomitantly reflects today\u2019s cringe-worthy headlines.<\/p>\n

Despite it being somewhat of an anachronism.<\/p>\n

With black playwright August Wilson leaning heavily on the n-word.<\/p>\n

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner wrote \u201cTrains\u201d in 1991 as one piece of a masterful 10-play series, but neither his language nor ghetto portrait are as edgy as, let\u2019s say, playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney\u2019s in the more recent Brother\/Sister Plays trilogy.<\/p>\n

I find \u201cTrains\u201d to be more a slice of life, centering on dissatisfaction and anger, than a dissection of racial tensions.<\/p>\n

Even though it uses the Civil Rights movement of the \u201860s as a backdrop.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther King\u2019s name is dropped, and a rally following the assassination of Malcolm X does get attention in the Multi Ethnic Theater (MET) drama at the Gough Street Playhouse in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>All six actors in the work, set in a Pittsburgh diner in 1969, adroitly showcase the period and the black working class while juxtaposing the humor and hope of Wilson\u2019s script.<\/p>\n

Although a fan used in a hallway to cool the theater occasionally muffles dialogue.<\/p>\n

In \u201cTrains,\u201d the frayed eatery is expected to become a casualty of a reconstruction project. And restaurant owner Memphis worries \u201cthe white man\u201d will cheat him by paying too little for the business.<\/p>\n

The milieu actually is similar to neighborhoods I watched change as a child growing up in a New York City suburb. Blacks typically saw those shifts through a radically different lens than we Caucasians \u2014 not as urban renewal but urban removal.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s work features six flesh-and-blood characters searching for empowerment but failing to find it easily.<\/p>\n

Each character is well defined.<\/p>\n

Bennie Lewis\u2019 bug-eyes quickly convey Memphis\u2019 likability \u2014 and frustration.<\/p>\n

Keita Jones spotlights job-hunting ex-con Sterling as a confused but determined lover not above stealing flowers from a mortuary or teaching a developmentally disabled fellow a black power anthem.<\/p>\n

Beverly McGriff, the only female in the cast, makes me believe Risa, an emotion-blocked cook-waitress with a penchant for cutting her legs is willing to change.<\/p>\n

Fabian Herd replicates the shady and selfish character of Wolf, a bookie; Geoffrey Grier (who alternates the role with Anthony Pride) fabricates a tunnel-visioned, mentally deficient Hambone; and Vernon Medearis is appropriately unpleasant as black-clad undertaker\/real estate magnate West.<\/p>\n

Stuart Elwyn Hall fills out the cast as Holloway, a 65-year-old self-styled philosopher.<\/p>\n

Curiously, though, I find the most fascinating Wilson characters to be Aunt Ester, an offstage 322-year-old mythic everyone visits to ward off bad things, and the dead Prophet Samuel, another being who never appears yet one whose coffin visage includes ostentatious bling and $100 bills.<\/p>\n

Lewis Campbell, who founded the MET and wears hats as its artistic director, executive director and stage designer, skillfully directs the drama.<\/p>\n

His diner set, incidentally, feels totally authentic \u2014 the kind I long ago liked to frequent.<\/p>\n

Four booths, a pass-through window to the kitchen, an old-fashioned pay phone (where Wolf takes 600-to-1 numbers bets), a blackboard on which daily specials are chalked, and an on-again, off-again jukebox that\u2019s occasionally fed quarters.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s language in the play, produced in association with Custom Made Theatre, can be poetic. But it also can ramble.<\/p>\n

Brief passages can be amazingly revelatory, though.<\/p>\n

As in a Memphis rant: \u201cAin\u2019t no justice. Jesus Christ didn\u2019t get no justice. What do you think you\u2019ll get?\u201d<\/p>\n

Or the effortless characterization embedded in Sterling\u2019s nonchalant declaration that \u201cI drove a getaway car once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or West\u2019s optimistic pronouncement that \u201clife is hard but it ain\u2019t impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo Trains Running\u201d is part of Wilson\u2019s Pittsburgh Cycle, sometimes referred to as the Century Cycle, where each play deals with the African-American experience in a different decade of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Best known probably are \u201cFences\u201d and \u201cThe Piano Lesson,\u201d both examples of intense theatricality.<\/p>\n

During this performance, however, I started squirming not long after intermission because the two-act outing runs half an hour too long, barely a few minutes short of three hours.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s important to note that Wilson (who was born Frederick August Kittel Jr.) reputedly started writing on a $10 stolen typewriter he\u2019d pawn when money got tight.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad he found that keyboard.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo Trains Running\u201d plays at the Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough St. (off Bush), San Francisco, through Sept. 12. <\/em>Evening performances, 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Matinees, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $20 to $35. Information: 1-415-798-2682 or info@custommade.org<\/em><\/p>\n

Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net<\/a> or check out his blog at www.vitalitypress.com\/<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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