William Mayfield is one of those quiet Pittsburgh resources, a professional electrician who is also a playwright of two decades' experience and some visibility.

		Sing Black Hammer Where: Kuntu Rep at Alumni Hall (formerly Masonic Temple), 4227 Fifth Ave., Oakland. When: Through Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 4 p.m. Tickets: $15-$20; student, senior and group discounts; 412-624-7298.

His works have been produced widely around the country, with two done here: "Sing Black Hammer" at Kuntu Rep in 1999 and "Harriet Tubman Loves Somebody" at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre in 2004.

Now, as the conclusion to its season of revivals, Kuntu has revived "Sing Black Hammer," well cast and well directed by visitor Herb Newsome. But an unusually tight schedule means the show has only three performances to go, through Sunday.

The setting is 1964 Detroit. Mayfield's characters are all ambitious in different ways, but they divide roughly between a trio of women doing restaurant work while they polish a singing act and four men doing construction work and struggling with antagonistic unions and white bosses to get ahead.

They variously flirt and dream, unite and squabble, as their prospects undulate up and down. At the end, the men are driving to Pittsburgh, hoping for better mill work there, while the women may be on the way to turning into the Supremes.

That resemblance is increased by the name of the central woman, Miss D, played by Kimberly Ginyard with a powerful smile and inveigling ways. Her male parallel is Johnson, a proud and capable worker, played by Leo Beatty with dignity but limited emotional insight.

Ample contrast comes from the innocent Youngblood of Richard Hutchins, an appealing comic presence, and the jittery Linda of Nailah Lewis. Ben Blakey plays a recent arrival in the city, and Ezra Smith is a young worker killed in an unexplained mill explosion. Marcia Jones is a feisty presence as the third singer.

She is somehow involved with Claude Brown, who runs the cafe where the women intermittently work. Brown has great presence, partly because he is played by the very capable Kevin Brown, but also because we learn something of his troubled youth, culminating in a dramatic scene of revelation with Stephanie Akers as the former madam who raised him.

The play moves briskly, covering a lot of ground in under two hours, aided by a complex but remarkably flexible set by Kenneth Ellis. Director Newsome is skilled at overlapping one scene with another or using street scenes as transition, making good use also of period-appropriate music.

The atmosphere is often compelling, especially in a cafe scene involving just about everyone in Act 2. There are many passages of lively dialogue, with the men arguing and laughing about liquor, money, women and work, while the women focus on men, makeup and serious dreams.

Mayfield has a definite poetic lilt, which sometimes lifts the ordinary banter onto a higher level but sometimes seems like a self-conscious voice coming from somewhere else. Take the title metaphor: The people are themselves hammers, hopefully hammering out their futures; hammers also suggest the contrast between the work for which the men get scant reward and the entertainment industry to which the women aspire, where work has a different heft.

Some of the lively and intriguing talk is muffled by realistic acting that doesn't give enough attention to verbal clarity. But what's most lacking is story connections. There's less plot than situations and moments, often seeming haphazard. Still, 1964 was a dramatic time, on the cusp of a new age.