Greta Oglesby as Aunt Esther and G. Valmont
Thomas as Solly Two Kings in the OSF production
of Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson.
Showing posts with label Gem of the Ocean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gem of the Ocean. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Gem of the Season
Greta Oglesby as Aunt Esther and G. Valmont
Thomas as Solly Two Kings in the OSF production
of Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson.
Gem of the Season at OSF
There’s a little more than a month left in the current Oregon Shakespeare Festival season, and a couple of the plays I liked and wrote about are still running (As You Like It, Stoppard’s On the Razzle), as well as a few I will write about later in the column (Lisa Loomer’s Distracted) and next week (Romeo & Juliet, and The Tempest, which end October 6.) But I’ve just seen the production I would favor over all others. If I were closer than 4 hours drive away, I’d see it several more times before it closes on October 27. It’s August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean.
Before his untimely death in 2005, August Wilson completed his ten-play “Pittsburgh Cycle” of one play about the African American experience set in each decade of the 20th century, an unprecedented achievement in American theatre. Gem of the Ocean is chronologically the first, set in 1904, but it was the next to last he wrote. New York Times critic Ben Brantley calls it the “touchstone” of his work, and it is that, on many levels.
Stylistically, it’s most like Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in 1911, and Wilson’s favorite of his previous plays (his least favorite is his most lauded, Fences, which OSF will do next season.) But in other ways, Gem of the Ocean is singular: it may well be the most assured and resonant of his plays, with August Wilson’s voice at its clearest and most oracular.
The character at the play’s center is Aunt Ester, a presence prepared for in other plays in the cycle, when she is invoked as a spiritual healer of mythic dimensions, said to be as old as African presence in America. She appears in “Gem” as a flesh and blood woman, although she claims to be 285 years old.
Though Phylicia Rashad (of Cosby fame) played the role to great acclaim on Broadway, the first to play Aunt Ester (at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago) was Greta Oglesby, who plays her in this production in Ashland. So not only did we see a sterling, moving performance, but it was by the actor August Wilson reportedly had in mind when he wrote the part.
As you can just about tell by their names, the characters in this play are both realistic and mythic: Black Mary, Aunt Ester’s protégée (played by Shona Tucker); Citizen Barlow, the young stranger who needs Ester’s guidance (Kevin Kenerly); Caesar, the villainous black constable (Derrick Lee Weeden); Rutherford Selig, a white traveling peddler (Bill Geisslinger), Eli, Ester’s gatekeeper (Josiah Phillips) and in particular, Solly Two Kings, the larger-than-life former slave who had escaped to Canada but returned to spirit other slaves to “Freedomland” on the Underground Railroad. G. Valmont Thomas gives a tour de force performance as Two Kings (named after both King Solomon and King David) who continues a more complicated fight for freedom and compassion in industrial Pittsburgh.
While the steel mill down the street employs but virtually enslaves black immigrants from the South, leading to a riot, a fire and inevitable death, Aunt Ester’s house becomes the fulcrum of several fates, worked out on economic, political, spiritual and personal levels. (This by the way is intentional--the author made sure that all these aspects are covered.) There’s action and interaction, but also Wilson’s characteristic storytelling, sounding as natural as overheard talk, yet with no word wasted and every word weighted—this time even more heightened and sharpened by the themes being set for the entire cycle.
When Aunt Ester sends Citizen on a tranced voyage to the undersea City of Bones clutching a paper boat, and that paper unfolded by Caesar contains writing that shatters his argument for law over justice—you know you are in the hands of a great poet of the theatre at the height of his achievement.
The play works with precision on several levels at once, and challenges the production to do so as well. The actors, director Timothy Bond and the other responsible parties at OSF meet the challenge, with inventive lighting, choreographed movement and especially some wonderful singing, that together bring the metaphorical to life, and the sense of conscious consequence to the flow of days. Life is a battlefield, Solly says, “And the battlefield’s bloody! The field of battle is always bloody. It can’t be no other way.” And yet, Aunt Ester says, “Don’t you know life is a mystery? I see you still trying to figure it out. It ain’t all for you to know. It’s all an adventure. That’s all life is. But you got to trust that adventure.”
There seemed to be more black people on stage than in the audience (but then, that was also true of OSF’s The Tempest)—still, the play connected and even though we were less demonstrative than a black audience might be, there were irrepressible bursts of applause and sounds of approval during the show, as well as the obligatory—but in this case, fully deserved-- standing ovation.
That’s fitting, because August Wilson’s plays connect all over the world. At his funeral service in Pittsburgh, director Marion McClinton (who directed Greta Oglesby in this play in Chicago) said, “August Wilson changed the lives of young men and women, of old men and women, of men and women in between, black, white, red, yellow. If they came from Mars, he changed them."
Distracted is a contemporary play by Lisa Loomer about a family dealing with a child who may or may not have Attention Deficit Disorder. Loomer creates the properly capacious context, and uses the incisiveness of visual as well as verbal humor without neglecting the pathos and complexity inherent in the subject. The OSF production fully supports and expresses the play. With its ability to surprise that energizes its honesty and involves the audience moment by moment, I felt this was a more effective treatment of a family issue than was Rabbit Hole earlier this season, but that play won the Pulitzer Prize so what do I know. The OSF’s New Theatre was a perfect venue for this play, and this kind of play is perfect for that smaller, more focusing, in-the-round theatre, as evidenced by the fact that absolutely everyone was talking about their experiences with ADD as they left the show. Distracted runs until Oct. 28.
Before his untimely death in 2005, August Wilson completed his ten-play “Pittsburgh Cycle” of one play about the African American experience set in each decade of the 20th century, an unprecedented achievement in American theatre. Gem of the Ocean is chronologically the first, set in 1904, but it was the next to last he wrote. New York Times critic Ben Brantley calls it the “touchstone” of his work, and it is that, on many levels.
Stylistically, it’s most like Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in 1911, and Wilson’s favorite of his previous plays (his least favorite is his most lauded, Fences, which OSF will do next season.) But in other ways, Gem of the Ocean is singular: it may well be the most assured and resonant of his plays, with August Wilson’s voice at its clearest and most oracular.
The character at the play’s center is Aunt Ester, a presence prepared for in other plays in the cycle, when she is invoked as a spiritual healer of mythic dimensions, said to be as old as African presence in America. She appears in “Gem” as a flesh and blood woman, although she claims to be 285 years old.
Though Phylicia Rashad (of Cosby fame) played the role to great acclaim on Broadway, the first to play Aunt Ester (at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago) was Greta Oglesby, who plays her in this production in Ashland. So not only did we see a sterling, moving performance, but it was by the actor August Wilson reportedly had in mind when he wrote the part.
As you can just about tell by their names, the characters in this play are both realistic and mythic: Black Mary, Aunt Ester’s protégée (played by Shona Tucker); Citizen Barlow, the young stranger who needs Ester’s guidance (Kevin Kenerly); Caesar, the villainous black constable (Derrick Lee Weeden); Rutherford Selig, a white traveling peddler (Bill Geisslinger), Eli, Ester’s gatekeeper (Josiah Phillips) and in particular, Solly Two Kings, the larger-than-life former slave who had escaped to Canada but returned to spirit other slaves to “Freedomland” on the Underground Railroad. G. Valmont Thomas gives a tour de force performance as Two Kings (named after both King Solomon and King David) who continues a more complicated fight for freedom and compassion in industrial Pittsburgh.
While the steel mill down the street employs but virtually enslaves black immigrants from the South, leading to a riot, a fire and inevitable death, Aunt Ester’s house becomes the fulcrum of several fates, worked out on economic, political, spiritual and personal levels. (This by the way is intentional--the author made sure that all these aspects are covered.) There’s action and interaction, but also Wilson’s characteristic storytelling, sounding as natural as overheard talk, yet with no word wasted and every word weighted—this time even more heightened and sharpened by the themes being set for the entire cycle.
When Aunt Ester sends Citizen on a tranced voyage to the undersea City of Bones clutching a paper boat, and that paper unfolded by Caesar contains writing that shatters his argument for law over justice—you know you are in the hands of a great poet of the theatre at the height of his achievement.
The play works with precision on several levels at once, and challenges the production to do so as well. The actors, director Timothy Bond and the other responsible parties at OSF meet the challenge, with inventive lighting, choreographed movement and especially some wonderful singing, that together bring the metaphorical to life, and the sense of conscious consequence to the flow of days. Life is a battlefield, Solly says, “And the battlefield’s bloody! The field of battle is always bloody. It can’t be no other way.” And yet, Aunt Ester says, “Don’t you know life is a mystery? I see you still trying to figure it out. It ain’t all for you to know. It’s all an adventure. That’s all life is. But you got to trust that adventure.”
There seemed to be more black people on stage than in the audience (but then, that was also true of OSF’s The Tempest)—still, the play connected and even though we were less demonstrative than a black audience might be, there were irrepressible bursts of applause and sounds of approval during the show, as well as the obligatory—but in this case, fully deserved-- standing ovation.
That’s fitting, because August Wilson’s plays connect all over the world. At his funeral service in Pittsburgh, director Marion McClinton (who directed Greta Oglesby in this play in Chicago) said, “August Wilson changed the lives of young men and women, of old men and women, of men and women in between, black, white, red, yellow. If they came from Mars, he changed them."
Distracted is a contemporary play by Lisa Loomer about a family dealing with a child who may or may not have Attention Deficit Disorder. Loomer creates the properly capacious context, and uses the incisiveness of visual as well as verbal humor without neglecting the pathos and complexity inherent in the subject. The OSF production fully supports and expresses the play. With its ability to surprise that energizes its honesty and involves the audience moment by moment, I felt this was a more effective treatment of a family issue than was Rabbit Hole earlier this season, but that play won the Pulitzer Prize so what do I know. The OSF’s New Theatre was a perfect venue for this play, and this kind of play is perfect for that smaller, more focusing, in-the-round theatre, as evidenced by the fact that absolutely everyone was talking about their experiences with ADD as they left the show. Distracted runs until Oct. 28.
More on August Wilson
I admit that when the OSF production of Gem of the Ocean started I wasn’t so sure I was going to like it. The somewhat generic set was unconvincing, and I was afraid the production would be as well. After all, I’d seen three of August Wilson's plays in his “Pittsburgh Cycle” in Pittsburgh, including the world professional theatre premiere of Jitney, where parts of the set weren’t just authentic reproductions of the Hill District setting—they were from the real location, including the actual neon sign. Perhaps the uniform color of the set at OSF (that Early American dark green you see in all the Early American malls) was necessary for the striking lighting effects later. In any case, within a few minutes it didn’t matter. The actors took over, and so did the magic of the play itself.
The music of August Wilson's plays was never stronger than in "Gem." Not just the blues music that had originally inspired him to acknowledge the reality of black life around him and find his own voice, but the music of his words.
August started out writing poetry, but when he began writing for the stage, one of his biggest problems was dialogue (if you can believe it.) So he asked a friend in Pittsburgh (Rob Penny), "How do you make them talk?" "You don't make them talk," Penny said. "You listen to them."
But it was only when he was away from Pittsburgh--living in St. Paul, Minnesota--that he began to hear them speaking, the characters who emerged from his Pittsburgh memories. And he really did listen--his plays began and proceeded for a long while just from what the characters told him. One character even emerged to demand that she have her own scene, which completely changed the play.
But as much as he picked up real black speech, it wasn't just that. It was August and his way with words and their music. In his remembrance after August's death in 2005, New York Times critic Ben Brantley quoted actor Charles S. Dutton, who starred in several of the Wilson plays, as observing that the dialogue is not strictly speaking the way black people speak. "It is a lingo that has an inherent rhythm of its own. Most of us have been black all our lives. But we kid each other about August's writing. We'll say, 'I've never heard anything in my life like that, have you?' "
The early action in "Gem" is triggered by an offstage act by a character we never see, who is accused of stealing a bucket of nails, and refuses to be arrested because he's innocent. Instead he dives into the river and refuses to come out, until he drowns.
August's plays often have such a character, who draws a line and stubbornly sticks to it, even when the principle seems trivial. Hambone in Two Trains Running, for example, who continues to demand the ham he believes he was promised for some work he did, nearly ten years before.
There are some roots to this in August's early life: once, when he was the home run hitter on a prep league baseball team, the coach tried to replace him at bat with his talentless son. August refused, walked off the field and was thrown off the team. When he was fifteen, the decision was even more consequential. A teacher (who was black) accused him of plagarizing a paper he wrote, because it was too good. August walked out of school and never went back. He continued his education on his own, at the main Carnegie Library in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, which was then very close to Forbes Field, where the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers played. Those glorious if faded rooms I know well have educated some other Pittsburgh literary figures, including critics Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley.
This stubbornness over apparently small matters can have tragic consequences (as when Levee turns his misdirected rage to murdering a fellow band member for stepping on his shoes in "Ma Rainey") but it can also be at the moral center of these plays, and the black experience. In August's view, black people have been told they would have to assimilate into white culture, and give up their own culture, in order to succeed. But some have stubbornly refused--they insist on keeping their culture, whatever the cost--and he admits that the cost might be economic. But he stands with those who refuse to give up who they are, even though it looks self-destructive. That turns out to be a strong theme in his last play, Radio Golf.
At the center of Gem of the Ocean is a mystical reenactment of the voyage over the oceans made by countless African slaves. Those that died and were thrown overboard, as well as symbolically those who died needlessly in bondage, form the "City of Bones" at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where one character in this play, and another in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, go to have their souls washed--that is, to be redeemed. But apart from Aunt Esther, the redeemer figure in this play is Solly Two Kings. He talks of blood, and sacrifices his, and his life, to save as many of his people as he can. Perhaps he's misguided in some of his acts, but he's clearly a redeemer and also a leader, the man with the staff, the Moses, too.
I'm sure white audiences will remember what he says about taking escaped slaves to "Freedomland" in Canada: "They got civilized people up there. I seen them. White as cotton. Got smiles on their faces. Shake your hand and say, 'Welcome.' I seen them. Don't never let nobody tell you there ain't no good white people. They got some good white people down here but they got to fight the law. In Canada they ain't got to fight the law.'"
The music of August Wilson's plays was never stronger than in "Gem." Not just the blues music that had originally inspired him to acknowledge the reality of black life around him and find his own voice, but the music of his words.
August started out writing poetry, but when he began writing for the stage, one of his biggest problems was dialogue (if you can believe it.) So he asked a friend in Pittsburgh (Rob Penny), "How do you make them talk?" "You don't make them talk," Penny said. "You listen to them."
But it was only when he was away from Pittsburgh--living in St. Paul, Minnesota--that he began to hear them speaking, the characters who emerged from his Pittsburgh memories. And he really did listen--his plays began and proceeded for a long while just from what the characters told him. One character even emerged to demand that she have her own scene, which completely changed the play.
But as much as he picked up real black speech, it wasn't just that. It was August and his way with words and their music. In his remembrance after August's death in 2005, New York Times critic Ben Brantley quoted actor Charles S. Dutton, who starred in several of the Wilson plays, as observing that the dialogue is not strictly speaking the way black people speak. "It is a lingo that has an inherent rhythm of its own. Most of us have been black all our lives. But we kid each other about August's writing. We'll say, 'I've never heard anything in my life like that, have you?' "
The early action in "Gem" is triggered by an offstage act by a character we never see, who is accused of stealing a bucket of nails, and refuses to be arrested because he's innocent. Instead he dives into the river and refuses to come out, until he drowns.
August's plays often have such a character, who draws a line and stubbornly sticks to it, even when the principle seems trivial. Hambone in Two Trains Running, for example, who continues to demand the ham he believes he was promised for some work he did, nearly ten years before.
There are some roots to this in August's early life: once, when he was the home run hitter on a prep league baseball team, the coach tried to replace him at bat with his talentless son. August refused, walked off the field and was thrown off the team. When he was fifteen, the decision was even more consequential. A teacher (who was black) accused him of plagarizing a paper he wrote, because it was too good. August walked out of school and never went back. He continued his education on his own, at the main Carnegie Library in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, which was then very close to Forbes Field, where the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers played. Those glorious if faded rooms I know well have educated some other Pittsburgh literary figures, including critics Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley.
This stubbornness over apparently small matters can have tragic consequences (as when Levee turns his misdirected rage to murdering a fellow band member for stepping on his shoes in "Ma Rainey") but it can also be at the moral center of these plays, and the black experience. In August's view, black people have been told they would have to assimilate into white culture, and give up their own culture, in order to succeed. But some have stubbornly refused--they insist on keeping their culture, whatever the cost--and he admits that the cost might be economic. But he stands with those who refuse to give up who they are, even though it looks self-destructive. That turns out to be a strong theme in his last play, Radio Golf.
At the center of Gem of the Ocean is a mystical reenactment of the voyage over the oceans made by countless African slaves. Those that died and were thrown overboard, as well as symbolically those who died needlessly in bondage, form the "City of Bones" at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where one character in this play, and another in Joe Turner's Come and Gone, go to have their souls washed--that is, to be redeemed. But apart from Aunt Esther, the redeemer figure in this play is Solly Two Kings. He talks of blood, and sacrifices his, and his life, to save as many of his people as he can. Perhaps he's misguided in some of his acts, but he's clearly a redeemer and also a leader, the man with the staff, the Moses, too.
I'm sure white audiences will remember what he says about taking escaped slaves to "Freedomland" in Canada: "They got civilized people up there. I seen them. White as cotton. Got smiles on their faces. Shake your hand and say, 'Welcome.' I seen them. Don't never let nobody tell you there ain't no good white people. They got some good white people down here but they got to fight the law. In Canada they ain't got to fight the law.'"
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Who is Aunt Ester?
Aunt Ester, referred to in Two Trains Running and King Hedley II, is a central character in Gem of the Ocean. In the preface to King Hedley II, August Wilson wrote: "Aunt Ester has emerged for me as the most significant persona of the cycle. The characters, after all, are her children. The wisdom and tradition she embodies are valuable tools for the reconstruction of their personality and for dealing with a society in which the contradictions, over the decades, have grown more fierce, and for exposing all the places it is lacking in virtue."
There is a symbolic dimension in her reputed age, which makes her precisely as old as the first slaves brought from Africa to the Americas. Her home is at 1839 Wylie Avenue, a real address but one which signifies the year of the Amistad slave rebellion. (No building currently exists at that address, although as far as I know, what stood there before hasn't been researched.)
But there may be an historical ancestor to the character of Aunt Ester. The title of the play comes from the 19th century song"Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," which was about an actual ship, the Columbia Rediviva, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. By then, the figure of "Columbia" as a symbol of America, and a female one (counterposed to Columbus) was well known as well. According to the OSF guide to this season's plays, the latest scholarship suggests that Columbia was first used in this way by Phillis Wheatley, an ex-slave who became the first black poet living in America to publish a book of poems, in 1773.
I think she may also be something of a model for Ester Tyler. Both were taken from Africa and sold as slaves when young girls, both were domestic servants to white women, took their last names and stayed with them until their deaths. Both have first names with slightly unconventional spelling. There are differences, the most obvious being that Phillis Wheatley died at the age of 31.
There is a symbolic dimension in her reputed age, which makes her precisely as old as the first slaves brought from Africa to the Americas. Her home is at 1839 Wylie Avenue, a real address but one which signifies the year of the Amistad slave rebellion. (No building currently exists at that address, although as far as I know, what stood there before hasn't been researched.)
But there may be an historical ancestor to the character of Aunt Ester. The title of the play comes from the 19th century song"Columbia, Gem of the Ocean," which was about an actual ship, the Columbia Rediviva, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. By then, the figure of "Columbia" as a symbol of America, and a female one (counterposed to Columbus) was well known as well. According to the OSF guide to this season's plays, the latest scholarship suggests that Columbia was first used in this way by Phillis Wheatley, an ex-slave who became the first black poet living in America to publish a book of poems, in 1773.
I think she may also be something of a model for Ester Tyler. Both were taken from Africa and sold as slaves when young girls, both were domestic servants to white women, took their last names and stayed with them until their deaths. Both have first names with slightly unconventional spelling. There are differences, the most obvious being that Phillis Wheatley died at the age of 31.
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