Home > Theater Reviews > Archives > 2007 > May > 08 > Entry
August Wilson’s ‘Radio Golf’ on Broadway
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
New York — Old Glory hangs like an elegy over August Wilson’s final play, “Radio Golf,” which was to open Tuesday night on Broadway, the final chapter of an unprecedented 10-play chronicle of African-American life in the 20th century.
The flag hovers like a dream and a disappointment over the life of central character Harmond Wilks, a middle-class golden boy determined to become the first black mayor of Pittsburgh. Wilks tells his wife, Mame, that he wants the Stars and Stripes blazed across his campaign posters. But when he thinks about his twin brother, Raymond, who came home from Vietnam in a coffin, he sobs at the thought of the flag.
“Radio Golf” — the last word from playwright Wilson, who died of cancer in 2005 — sends a mixed signal about a democracy that promises everyone an equal chance, yet often fails to honor the bargain. As Wilks and his arrogant business partner, Roosevelt Hicks, forge ahead with plans to redevelop the blighted Hill District of Pittsburgh — and put a Barnes & Noble, a Starbucks and a Whole Foods over an ancient house at 1839 Wylie Ave. — their ill-considered scheme comes to a halt in a blaze of hubris, betrayal and last-minute redemption.
Directed by Atlanta’s Kenny Leon, this 1990s coda to Wilson’s decade-by-decade Century Cycle of plays may not have the fecund poetic sweep of his late masterpieces, the magnificent “Gem of the Ocean” and the Aeschylean “King Hedley II.” But it is a warm and vital celebration of the will of the common man to stare down the monolith of progress and honor the past.
Wilks (Harry Lennix) and Hicks (James A. Williams) might well have achieved their vision were it not for the arrival of Old Joe Barlow (Anthony Chisholm), who owns the mansion once occupied by Aunt Ester, and Sterling Johnson (John Earl Jelks), who has fond memories of sitting at her knee. Followers of Wilsonian mythology will recognize Aunt Ester as the 287-year-old matriarch and healer from “Gem of the Ocean,” which was set in her living room at 1839 Wylie.
As the past collides with the present, Wilks undergoes a reversal of fortune that is also a harbinger of his awakening. Mame (Tonya Pinkins) is trying to get a job as the governor’s press secretary, and Hicks, a bank vice president and ardent golfer, buys a radio station, which becomes the pulpit for his program, “Radio Golf.” While Wilks and Hicks make a Faustian bargain that will erase their old neighborhood, Old Joe and Sterling remember the Hill’s glory days, when folks used to line up for Miss Harriet’s fried chicken.
Lennix and Pinkins give smartly polished, almost effortless-looking performances, and Williams’ take on the smug, self-aggrandizing Hicks is virtually pitch-perfect. But the real blood and guts of this production are Chisholm’s gritty, spittle-spouting street prophet and Jelks’ fiercely eloquent house painter, who leads a kind of insurrection to stop the bulldozers.
“A perfect day is the saddest day,” Old Joe says. “You know why? ’Cause it has to come to an end. I’ve had many perfect days. I thought they were going to last forever. But they all come to an end.” When the hardscrabble philosopher utters those words, written by Wilson just before his death, you can almost hear a pin drop in the theater.
That said, “Radio Golf” is probably more important as a historic occasion than a work of art.
Though there are moments of Wilson’s majestic poetry, the deceptively simply drama is not flawless. Ebbing and flowing with humor and static, the loose ends feel hastily and self-consciously tied up — an easy out. The titular metaphors of golf and radio often seem more truncated and extraneous than organic, as when Roosevelt suddenly puts a Tiger Woods poster on the wall of Bedford Hills Redevelopment, the storefront setting of the play. Pinkins is a major Broadway star, but the character of Mame is slight and perfunctory, her journey never fully explored.
On the design side, David Gallo’s exploded set is a clue that this playwright is preoccupied with the accumulated strata of a vanishing culture and the battle scars of the soul. Adjoining the threadbare but functional real estate office are the burned-out remains of the community’s gathering spots: an old barbershop and a watering hole. Though Susan Hilferty’s unremarkable costumes are appropriate to the characters’ social standing, Donald Holder’s economical lighting never accentuates the scenery’s rough outer edges.
After 23 years, two Pulitzer Prizes (“Fences,” “The Piano Lesson”) and numerous other awards, the cycle that began with “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is finally complete. An up-to-the-minute argument on race, class and the importance of remembering where you came from, “Radio Golf” ends with a loud, thumping offstage party and a message for the ages. The human heart is prone to error and corruption. Common sense is scarce. But in the final analysis, decency and goodness will prevail.
THE 411: Open-ended engagement. $31.25-$96.25. Cort Theatre, 138 W. 48th St., New York City. 1-800-432-7250, telecharge.com.
THE VERDICT: Wilson issues a call to honor the past.
wbrock@ajc.com
Permalink | |
