August Wilson is arguably the greatest American playwright of the last century. In a remarkable career, particularly the 10-play saga set in each decade of the 20th century, he chronicled the lives and aspirations of the African American experience with poetry and power. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in 1910s Pittsburgh whose residents have the memories of slavery as well as the first-hand awareness of Jim Crow-era injustice, is a quintessential Wilson drama that’s had two all-too-brief runs on Broadway, in 1988 and then in 2009.
Director Debbie Allen’s starry new revival, headlined by Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson as the proprietors of the boarding house where the action takes place, is an admirable production that hits the major dramatic notes and occasionally hints at the sublime transcendence of the material. The chief draw here is Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who brings grounded authority to the role of “conjure man” Bynum Walker — a practitioner of folk magic whose particular gift is binding people together.
There’s a particular need for that around the Hollys’ boardinghouse, whose residents and hangers-on all seem to be yearning for connection in a community marked by transience, abandonment, and loss. He advises Mattie (Nimene Sierra Wureh, whose eyes rivet our attention whether she’s being shyly coquettish or silently longing) that she’s not meant to be bound to the boyfriend who left her after the two babies they had together died in infancy. He also counsels the smooth, self-confident city newcomer Jeremy (Tripp Taylor, a puffed-up peacock with a blues guitar), who has “too much country in him” and no sooner hooks up with Mattie before he runs off with a younger, prettier woman (Maya Boyd) all too aware of her beauty and willing to exploit it to her advantage.
These domestic problems are child’s play compared to Bynum’s major challenge: Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone), a former sharecropper from down South who arrives at the boarding house with his beanpole of a daughter (Savannah Commodore, a forthright charmer who shares the role with Dominique Skye Turner at some performances) seeking the wife he lost track of more than a decade before. Dressed in a long black coat and wide-brimmed hat (costumes by Paul Tazewell), Boone aptly looms menacingly over the stage — a tightly wound spring of anger and resentment that threatens to unleash its fury at the slightest provocation, including the snippets of an old folk song like “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” — a reference to a semi-mythical “mancatcher” who exploited a loophole in the 13th Amendment by indenturing poor Black into forced labor on trumped-up criminal charges. In Loomis’s case, that meant a seven-year sentence that separated him from his wife, who fled to the North for work.
Loomis remains one of Wilson’s most memorable creations, a figure who not only grounds us in the grim reality of how the brutal treatment of Black Americans endured long after slavery’s end but who also ushers us into a mystical magic realism rooted in Pentecostal services where the devout can be possessed by unseen spirits who communicate through them. And Boone captures the character in all his contradictions, menacing and haunting in almost equal measure. Allen underplays the otherworldly aspects of Loomis’s big breakdown at the end of the first act — especially compared to Bartlett Sher’s effects-heavy production in 2009 — but she narrows the focus to the individual level. Loomis, with Bynum as his spirit guide, are caged in a spotlight (lighting by Tracey Derosier) where David Gallo’s simple set fades away, punctuated by the thunderclap of Justin Ellington’s sound design.
Allen’s direction is unfussy and relaxed. The cast is solid, though they sometimes seem to be playing in different productions, with Cedric and Henson heading up a long-running TV dramedy while Wureh’s Mattie watches on as the best friend in some indie rom-com. (Allen does little to call attention to Mattie’s pivotal final moments, just before the curtain falls.)
In the end, it all comes back to Boone and Santiago-Hudson. Boone commands our attention again in a captivating final scene where Loomis comes face to face with not only his long-lost wife (Abigail Onwunali, in a brief but barnstorming performance) but the internal demons that have been consuming him for years but that now push away from the dinner table in bones-picked-clean satisfaction. He’s ready to do battle — to wage war against himself and the injustices that he’s had to endure. Boone nails the fury as well as the poetry of Wilson’s dialogue, while Santiago-Hudson extends his binding gifts to connect the audience to the unnatural acts that explode before our eyes. It’s in these moments that Joe Turner’s Come and Gone not only shines, but shines like new money. ★★★★☆
JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE
Barrymore Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through July 26 for $69 to $371