Playwright: August Wilson
At: Congo Square Theatre Company at Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn
Phone: 312-443-3800; $10-$37
Runs through: Feb. 18
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Common knowledge warns us that a mortal touched by divine intervention is likely to be significantly altered, even slightly damaged, by the encounter. Herald Loomis, the protagonist of this second chapter in August Wilson's 10-play saga, is such a person. Bad fortune has crippled his spirit, leaving him with only one quest: to find the wife he returned from prison to find gone. His search has brought him and his young daughter to the dwelling of the shaman who will deliver him from his bondage.
But wait! This is Pittsburgh in 1911! What are visions of ghostly slave-ships and nightmares of marauding gangs of municipally-sanctioned captors doing in a steel-belt boarding house for Negroes seeking industrial jobs in the northern factories? Didn't the Emancipation Proclamation put an end to all that 40-odd years earlier?
As with the other plays in the series, Wilson's story offers a close-up of history all but lost to Americans until the last quarter-century. Law enforcers in the postbellum south could still imprison dark-skinned males at will, legal aid being all but nonexistent in those economically-depressed agricultural regions. Small wonder so many disenfranchised citizens emigrated, laden with what stability their recent employers' religion and their own memories of African customs offered the homeless. And what locale is better suited to provide us a panoramic view of this subculture than this homely refuge for transients?
Playing just down the hall from the Goodman's big-budget equity production of Wilson's Radio Golf sets a high bar for the Congo Square Theatre Company. Under Derrick Sanders' adroit direction, however, each cast member—from Javon Johnson and Allen Gilmore's mystical pilgrims to Aaron Todd Douglas and Taron Patton's comfortably free-born landlord and lady, —delivers a multi-dimensional picture of his or her character ( with special mention to Tracey Bonner, Bakesta King and TayLar as three very dissimilar spinsters ) . Add a museum-accurate scenic design by Richard and Jacqueline Penrod, as well as the evocative sound design by Josh Horvath and Ray Nardelli, and the result is a rich, densely-textured parable of conflict and redemption in a world where Bibles and jujus wield equal power in the salvation of endangered souls.