August Wilson (April 27, 1945-October 2, 2005) was America’s most influential playwright in the second half of the 20th century. His cycle of 10 plays explicating the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century was an unparalleled gift to the country, and the Black Rep has shared that gift with St. Louis, every play along the way.
Now comes the last of Wilson’s cycle, and the last to be performed by the Black Rep, Radio Golf. The Black Rep has mounted a very tight and intricate presentation of this strangely titled play, which revisits many of the playwright’s basic themes.
The struggle between a dark and seemingly unproductive past and a bright and possibly lucrative future is again put on display when Harmond Wilks, a scion of a black real estate empire, creates something called the Bedford Hills Redevelopment, Inc.
His beautiful, talented and ambitious wife, Mame Wilks, is a public relations whiz and his hard-headed, business-savvy better half. Roosevelt Hicks is his business partner, a recently promoted bank vice-president, former high school classmate and avid golfer.
Together, they plan to make a financial killing by redeveloping a blighted area of what used to be the black community. Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, new names subbing for the usual suspects, are their new and avowed corporate partners in crime.
The deal is set. The results have been measured and even multiplied. Harmond, who is also a mayoral candidate, sees this deal propelling him to political power; he is already measuring the mayor’s seat. Mame has already interviewed for a job on the governor’s staff and sees herself doubly blessed as first lady of the city and a state-wide power broker.
There are three problems.
The first is an old man who calls himself Elder Joseph Barlow. He is the owner of a blighted property that Harmond has acquired illegally. He is a wandering soul, whose presence shifts internally from poet to hustler.
Problem number two is Sterling Johnson, a self-employed contractor and handy man who is high-functioning, but lives off the grid and did time once for robbing a bank.
Problem three is Harmond Wilks himself. He is the astute, brilliant, social composition of a black future devoid of racial paranoia and oppression. But, he is also the heir to a history of scores unsettled and warfare extended by other means.
Director Lorna Littleway has given Wilson his due. The tautness of the play is kept intact by an unusually adept use of the old Irving Berlin song “Blue Skies.” The episodic nature of the scenes are made subtle rather than abrupt by the song’s recurrence in different versions.
At first the indication is that Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire – the lightweight, dapper and breezy denizens who inhabited the original musical – are running the show. Harmond’s big ideas and Roosevelt’s worship of the uplifting qualities of the game of golf seem to fit this mode.
But then suddenly one hears Doctor John, with his deep New Orleans hoodoo voice, introduce a scene. He is followed by Ella Fitzgerald scatting “Blue Skies” like her life depended on an entirely different rhythmic concept of the song. By the time Dinah Washington’s version kicks in at the end, the dynamic of the world Wilson has created has changed.
Andre Sills (as Harmond Wilks) and Daryl Alan Reed (as Roosevelt Hicks) play beautifully off one another, as they did in the Black Rep’s production of Othello. Sills’ officious, educated, uptight, but soulful characterization of a good man trying not to go wrong is given horizontal energy by Reed’s hustling, stuff-talking, get-rich-or-die-trying performance as a man in need of a constant new fix.
A.C. Smith (as Johnson) is so real in his role as upholder of a certain kind of community action man that you’d almost like him to have more than one role in the play.
Erik Kilpatrick’s Elder Joseph Barlow was a genuine representative of one of Wilson’s most revered archetypes, the rascal, healer, storyteller. Bianca LaVerne Jones was fiery, almost shiny – maybe the word “sparkling” is better – as Mame Wilks.
The set was a constant and interesting blue. The coalescing of that blue and its evolution with the evolution of the theme song was logical and intellectually quite honest.
I hate to end on a negative note for such a fine production, but it must be said that the missing of lines by some of the principles was totally unacceptable. It staggered the ear and made the great lines and beautiful language of August Wilson choppy and even incoherent, in one instance.
Overall, this production was a fine presentation of the culminating work of a great artist. What else is there to say?
Radio Golf plays at the Grandel Theatre, 3610 Grandel Square, through March 9. Three-play subscriptions to the Black Rep are $105 and are good for any show best available seat. Single tickets range from $33 to $43. Student rush tickets (30 minutes prior to curtain) are $10 with valid I.D. Young people ages 8-18 will be admitted free with the purchase of an adult ticket on Thursday evenings and Saturday matinees. Limit one child per adult. For tickets, call (314) 534-3810 or visit www.theblackrep.org.
