The plays of August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle seem so new, their development in regional theaters and arrival on Broadway such fresh memories, that it's surprising to find them entering the rhythm of revival in smaller theaters further down on the theatrical totem pole.

		'Joe Turner's Come and Gone' Where: Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company, Jackman Building, 542 Penn Ave., Downtown. When: Through Sept. 4. Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun. 4 p.m.; 3 p.m. only Aug. 27. Tickets: $15-$22.50; 412-288-0358.

On the other hand, they really aren't that new. "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," now revived by Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, was the third of the Pittsburgh Cycle to appear, reaching Broadway way back in 1988. All that keeps it and Wilson's other early classics from frequent revival is their dramatic size and the demands they make on producers.

And on the third hand, this issue of recent vs. not-so-recent is really beside the point. The great plays of the Pittsburgh Cycle -- and whichever your favorites may be, "Joe Turner" is surely one of the very best -- are so completely themselves that they have become instant classics. Wilson is a playwright for both now and all time. We feel his presence among us as his work continues to emerge, with the 10th and final play in the cycle now just working its way through early productions toward its final shape. But the earlier plays already seem to have always been there for us to marvel at.

For a small company like Pittsburgh Playwrights, it is a bold plan to stage one play from the cycle each year, as the company has already done its first two years with "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and "Fences." But Wilson is the great Pittsburgh playwright, and the company was founded by Mark Clayton Southers, who was directly inspired by Wilson to take up theater in mid-career. So tackling Wilson, no matter the size of the challenge, is absolutely this company's right, even inescapable choice.

"Joe Turner" is a big, elemental play to squeeze into the simple, intimate space that Pittsburgh Playwrights has carved out under the parking garage in the Jackman Building. Sometimes, under Eileen Morris' direction, it veers toward comic caricature. But it is always capable and occasionally luminous, and for the most part it realizes the play's unique fusion of day-to-day humanity with spiritual mystery and longing.

The Pittsburgh Cycle plays are all different, but they all dramatize the search for self and community in a world of ongoing upheaval. In "Joe Turner," that world is the fluid, evolving one of the early industrial era, when black Americans in increasing numbers were leaving the semi-bondage of Southern sharecropping and gravitating to the expanding factories of the North.

The play is set in 1911 Pittsburgh, with slavery still a living personal memory, as it is even more in Wilson's 1904-set play, "Gem of the Ocean," which will make its Pittsburgh debut next spring at the Public Theater. That sets these two plays off from "The Piano Lesson," set in 1927, when that active memory had ebbed, even though the northern migration continued.

In "Joe Turner," the active expression of the terror of slavery falls to one of Wilson's strangest creations, Herald Loomis (played by Ben Cain). As his name suggests, he looms up with an implacable presence, frightening at first. But as he discovers himself, we learn to see him as a herald (perhaps) of a new freedom.

The world into which Loomis erupts is a working-class boarding house presided over by Seth Holly (Wali Jamal), a millworker and frustrated capitalist with a sideline in crafting small metal goods that are sold by Rutherford Selig (Mark Thompson), and by Holly's wife, Bertha (Teri Bridgett), the nurturing complement to his cranky entrepreneurship. The most distinctive member of the household is Bynum Walker (Doug Pona), perhaps the most fully realized of Wilson's folk sages or shamans -- the voices of the people who tie the everyday to spiritual history.

Bynum's defining insight is that the victims of the African-American diaspora have lost their "songs" -- the expression of individuality that ties them to the group. Loomis is his sensational case in point. When he explodes in frenzied denunciation and an apocalyptic vision of the slaughter at the root of American slavery, it is Bynum who guides him through an emotive catharsis to rebirth which leaves him "shining," as Bynum says, "like new money."

The Holly boarding house is a way station for others on their voyage of discovery -- Jeremy (Jonathan Berry), the handsome young guitar-playing laborer and lover, eager to taste what life has to offer; Molly (Anji Corley), a striking woman who is used to being taken care of by eager men; and Mattie (Christina Maria Acosta), a woman of bitter experience with a lot left to give.

Loomis is in search of his wife, Martha (Twanda Clark), whose more conventional religiosity contrasts with his prophetic terrors, and is accompanied by his young daughter, Zonia (Taylor Erniece Whitley), who makes a friendship with Reuben (Michael Curry), a young neighbor.

The play's most famous scene, comparable in content and impact with the burst of abandoned dancing in Brian Friel's "Dancing at Lughnasa," is the "juba" sequence at the end of Act 1. It's a test for any group, and these actors do it proud with a sharp sense of rhythmic involvement and individual revelation.

That's when Loomis erupts, and Cain has the power and fixity required. He is a younger, more handsome Loomis than I recall, which increases the poignancy of his lost years. It also adds an erotic charge to his delicate courtship scene with Acosta's Mattie.

Pona is an actor of idiosyncrasy and presence, which is to say he doesn't have to do much to make a compelling Bynum. Jamal and Bridgett provide a continuing warm presence of their own, and the supporting women add variety of character.

That's what director Morris is mainly after, I expect. Sure, "Joe Turner" tackles difficult issues of self-identity and definition, but Wilson characteristically puts the reality of his characters ahead of their thematic significance. Indeed, it's because they are characters first that they can so effectively stand for the issues which Wilson sees at play.

It is a serendipitous boon that "Joe Turner" gives Pittsburgh Playwrights a chance to advertise itself as staging "August in August." But of course Wilson is good at any time. And in addition to the Public's "Gem," Pittsburgh will host another revival this year, when "Seven Guitars" is staged by Kuntu Rep.