Playwright: August Wilson
At: Congo Square Theatre Company at the Duncan YMCA/Chernin Center For The Arts, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd.
Phone: ( 312 ) 587-2292; $25
Runs through: June 12
This fifth chapter in August Wilson's chronicle of the Black experience in America presents us with two men, both of whom are driven to madness by their ambitions. One we meet at the onset of his aspirations and the other, at the end of his. But while we watch the first surrender to reckless impulse, we also see approaching, with the inevitability of Greek tragedy, the inexorable despair which will overcome the latter and seal both their fates.
Pittsburgh's shabby Hill District in 1949 scarcely seems a setting for drama of such scope, but it is here that Floyd Barton returns from Chicago with a recording contract in his pocket and big plans for his bandmates and the girl he left behind. At first his comrades hesitate, but gradually they are won over by his infectious enthusiasm, even as old King Henley—whose mind swarms with ancestral myths, Garveyite propaganda and the bitter legacy of jazz trumpeter Buddy 'King' Bolden, whose name he bears—serves to remind them that hope comes at a price.
The property-master's roster for this show lists only two guitars, with another one talked about, but never seen. Wilson's title instead refers to the seven characters, whose speech intertwines in symphonic harmony to paint an aural panorama of their universe and the choices it offers. Though this is not precisely a musical, it comes as no surprise when the three professional bluesmen and their associates find their voice in songs ranging from bawdy jitterbugs to a reverent a cappella rendition of Mallote's Lord's Prayer. And if this isn't enough to identify this Congo Square production as an ensemble show, director Derrick Sanders' stage pictures reflect a Rembrandtlike composition arising from the dramatic action so naturally we are hardly aware of its fundamental artifice.
The ease with which the actors play together makes for impressive teamwork, but if any individual performance is to be singled out, it is that of Kenn E. Head as the oracular Henley, whose invocation of cosmic forces is so vividly intense that we can almost see the spirits of Ogou, Shango and Damballah emerge from the ashes of thwarted promises and dreams deferred.