"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" at Chicago's Goodman Theatre

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"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" at Chicago's Goodman Theatre

"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" at Chicago's Goodman Theatre

- On Location: Backstage with the Playwrights

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JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE
By
August Wilson

At

The Goodman Theatre
(Goodman Website)
170 N. Dearborn Street
Chicago, Illinois 60601
312.443.3800

Presented By
Congo Square Theatre Company
(Congo Square Website)
2936 N. Southport
Suite 210
Chicago, Illinois 60657
773.296.1108

Starring:
Scott Baity, Jr., Tracey Bonner, Daniel Bryant, Aaron Todd Douglas, Allen Gilmore, Javon Johnson, Bakesta King, Taron Patton, Jasmine Randle, Stephen Spencer, TayLar

Director: Derrick Sanders
Assistant Director: Anthony Irons
Stage Manager/Company Manager: Rose Marie Packer
Scenic Designers: Jackie Penrod, Rick Penrod
Sound Designers: Josh Horvath, Ray Nardelli
Lighting Designer: Benny Gomes
Costume Designer: Christine Pascual
Properties Designer: Ann Meilahn
Production Manager: Alison Ramsey
Publicity Representatives: Denise Garrity, Brandon Hayes
Account Executive: Ann Fink

Susan Weinrebe
January 29, 2007

As the second play in the 10-play tour de force by the late, great August Wilson, Joe Turner’s Come And Gone is both odyssey and metaphor for the life and times of African Americans, less than fifty years removed from slavery days.

The compactly cut away set design places the action mainly in the 1911 kitchen of Seth and Bertha Holly’s boarding house and variously on their porch and in their parlor. Down hominess and lack of pretense in this domain of working class folks sets the tone for what should be the confines of their daily labor and brief rest. Yet, as the boarders flow in and out of the house, we see them mostly unmoored to any one place. They are on the move for whatever will bring them to the next turn of their fortunes. These folks are seekers and, as they journey from place to place, so we see a nation of people rather than individuals on the move. They are the generation just beyond slavery that is searching. For what?

Preponderantly, they seem to be searching for that other part of themselves that is defined as either man or woman. In this all-consuming quest, they stumble from one short-lived relationship to another, briefly coalescing with some available someone only to have their hearts broken after a brief burst of happiness. Even the youngsters, well-portrayed by the least child-acting of child-actors recently seen on stage, Scott Baity, Jr. and Jasmine Randle, feel the urge to merge self with another in their early explorations of the opposite sex. Most notably, and at the locus of the drama, is Herald Loomis, as he literally lurches through his life, desperately seeking his missing wife, so close he can, “…smell her.”

His stumbling about the stage until he collapses into a horrific fit in the midst of the others’ exuberant juba dancing is a metaphor for someone so empty inside that his bones won’t support him. One of the recurring references in Mr. Wilson’s work is to a “…city of bones,” and Biblically, to the “…dry bones” that got up and danced. If ever there was a spirit in need of resurrection, it is that of Herald Loomis whose obsessive single-mindedness is frighteningly staged by the looming characterization of Javon Johnson. His face shadowed by his fedora, shrouded inside a travel worn great coat, his clothing is the husk of the man inside. And, not to a small extent, it resembles a folk interpretation of the Grim Reaper.

Two guides figure prominently in the entwined stories of the cast. The omnipresent Bynum, so called because he makes songs that “bind people together,” is part soothsayer, part wise daddy. Allen Gilmore, in this character, aptly succeeds in fleshing out Bynum as the link between mystical practices involving blood sacrifice, herbs, potions and life-way advice and the visions of a mystic. His ministrations are priestly, and he is as much an EMT for the soul as someone who arrives with flashing red lights. The other guide is the only Caucasian character in the play, Rutherford Selig, played with disingenuous directness by Stephen Spencer. Once his family hunted and returned escaped slaves, but now, ferrying the river like the mythical boatman, he finds and returns missing people to those who seek them.

This was the first opportunity I’d had to see a production of the Congo Square Theatre Company and, as at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, I was struck by the power of an ensemble cast. Aaron Todd Douglas, as the fast-talking, fast-thinking, never-one-to-lose-in-a-deal Seth Holly, provided both humor and social commentary, eager as he was to maintain his economic position and better it. With an opinion on everyone and everything, he was the play’s moderating chorus. By the presence of her height and demeanor, TaRon Patton (Bertha Holly) was the perfect foil for the bombast of her husband’s pronouncements and earth mother to the rest. Daniel Bryant, the guitar playing Jeremy Furlow, so elastic in his expressive face and body, and excellent in his comic timing, stayed safely just this side of caricature.

As with any August Wilson play, one leaves thinking hard about the medium and its message and coming back to moments in the story to see them in a different light. There’s great stuff to think about and, through the frame of reference, the meta-meanings apply to all manner of people. There’s humor, always, wisdom, layers of meaning and opportunities to learn, even as with the title of the play, Joe Turner’s Come And Gone. Through all this, one realizes the brilliance and loss of the playwright and what might yet have been.

Before the performance, Congo Square Theatre Company hosted a reception on the gallery level of the Goodman Theatre. Sundaes, warm bread pudding and wines were served to the hot and brassy accompaniment of Marcel Jean’s jazz ensemble, ZZAJÉ. Their big sound and liveliness were the perfect preamble to the rest of the evening.