This play, the 2nd chronologically in Wilson's ten-play cycle, is a character study of the inhabitants of a boarding house in Pittsburgh in 1911. I worked on the Broadway production of this play. The lyricism of the play stays with me, but I have trouble remembering the sequence of events, perhaps because the play is an exploration of losing yourself in spirituality, with an ambiguous point of view. Most unforgettable lines: "Say when you look at a fellow, if you taught yourself to look for it, you can see his song written on him. Tell you what kind of man he is in the world. Now I can look at you, Mr. Loomis, and see you a man who done forgot his song. Forgot how to sing it. A fellow forget that and he forget who he is. Forget how he's supposed to mark down life..." ( )

This play of August Wilson is set in 1911 at the home of Seth and Bertha Holly. Seth rents out rooms in his house and Bertha provides two meals a day. Bynum, a rootworker, and Jeremy a young kid who works on the road and plays guitar are living at Seth's when the play begins. The story centers around Harold Loomis who is looking for his wife Martha. He and his daughter Zonia move in to Seth's house at the beginning of the play. Harold pays Rutherford Selig, who is a traveling salesman and a people finder, to find his wife.
During the play Harold goes into a spell and Bynum talks him out of it. Seth doesn't like Harold going into a spell and tells him he will have to move. Zonia gets to know Reuben, the boy next door, who kisses her and says she will be his wife. Jeremy picks up with one woman and then runs off with Molly Cunningham who is real slick.
The play takes place in Seth's kitchen or in the back yard. August Wilson is an excellent playwright. I don't say that lightly. I enjoyed spending time in the world of Seth, Bertha and the others. Seth and Bynum play dominoes while Bynum sings " Joe Turner's Come and Gone". Everybody eats a biscuit with grits and gravy for breakfast and fried chicken on Sunday. It's a friendly place.
Wilson's skill is in making the play an authentic portrayal of this experience. I felt that this play focused on the issue of personal power. It included several incidents that illustrated how racism deprived African Americans of power over their lives. To make sure you can't forget at the end we learn who Joe Turner is and get a real cruel example of white supremacy at work in the lives of some nice people who just happened to be African American. Read this play and then talk about the good old days. ( )

The use of magical realism in August Wilson's drama about the African American experience in a post-Civil War Pittsburgh is not the only surprising rhetorical technique utilized by the playwright. Wilson infuses his characters with religious allegory to underscore the suffering brought on by slavery and discrimination. Colloquial language abounds, as does the symbolism - it is mainly these devices that drive forward what would otherwise be a play sparse in story. The characters never seem to jump off the page with that subjective "aliveness" that we come to expect from theatre. They feel more like tools to serve the writer's objective more than actual human beings with flaws. The only sense of reality comes from the females, who seem to speak the truth plainly more than their male counterparts, who use extended metaphors in their speech to convey the injustices of the time period. The play makes for a quick and very interesting read, but never seems to get right into the heads of any one person. ( )

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