NEW YORK -- What is the past worth?

	Carol Rosegg In "Radio Golf," Anthony Chisholm, left, portrays Old Joe and and Harry Lennix is Harmond Wilks, the play's central character. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage August Wilson and his Pittsburgh Cycle: A Coverage Index Interactive map of August Wilson's Hill District

It's a question with many dimensions and no easy answers. Certainly none are offered in August Wilson's "Radio Golf," which opened last night on Broadway, putting in place the final edifice in Wilson's epic Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 dramas chronicling the tragedy and triumph of black Americans throughout the 20th century.

In posing its hard questions about the relationships of the past to future, individual to group and commerce to spirit, it's a fitting finale. Wilson, who died in 2005 while putting the finishing touches on the script, has gathered the century's hopes and frustrations and dumped them in the laps of the black middle class, which he says must face its responsibilities to the impoverished black population left behind.

This being August Wilson, what is really at stake is the middle class' soul. And the production directed by Kenny Leon, with the evocative set designed by David Gallo, lands a couple of emotional haymakers right at the start.

First is the show curtain, a Romare Bearden-like panorama of storefronts in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Search this brooding reminder of history and art pressing on the present, and you find references to other plays in the cycle, with a hint of the playwright's presence, as well.

Then the curtain rises on a functional place of work tables, folding chairs, boxes of files and a wall of maps and posters. It's 1997 in the office of Bedford Hills Redevelopment on Centre Avenue. But this modernity lies thinly on top of the past, as the central character, Harmond Wilks -- handsome lawyer, real estate dealer and would-be politician -- observes, proudly pointing to a pressed tin ceiling.

Meanwhile, standing mute is Gallo's other emotional coup -- to the left, a derelict barber shop; to the right, a dusty, abandoned diner; and empty, shattered floors above. Barber shop and diner were the lively communal spaces of the once vibrant Hill. Now they stand as abandoned tokens of a community that once nurtured in spite of adversity.

The debate is between that communal past and the competitive present. Those dark rooms, as pregnant with mute testimony as unopened chambers in an ancient pyramid or funeral mound, speak for the ignored past.

But "Radio Golf" is an answer to those who complain that Wilson focuses only on the downtrodden. In bringing the struggle down to the present day and the middle class, it should prove more accessible than Wilson's starker tragedies. "Radio Golf" may not be one of the best of the cycle, but it is indispensable.

"The Hill District's dead," says Mame Wilks, Harmond's successful, educated wife, who wants her successful, educated husband to leave it behind in his campaign to be mayor. But Harmond is involved in a complex Hill redevelopment scheme to build 180 apartments with integral retail space. It's as contemporary a story as if he were building a slots parlor or riding on the development coattails of a new arena.

All seems on track until the appearance of scruffy Old Joe Barlow. At the heart of the development site is a grand relic, a ramshackle old mansion whose past is connected to the Hill's historic soul.

It ought to be simple to redesign the development to allow for preservation, which would make even commercial sense as a way to humanize a high-rise monstrosity. But the deal is too jerry-rigged to allow for amendment, making it a microcosm of black community development within a dominantly white economy.

The house itself is a fictitious old mansion at 1839 Wylie Avenue that was the home of Wilson's Aunt Ester, last in a line of spiritual healers reaching back to 1619, when the first African slaves were brought to Virginia. Repository of centuries of trial and tribulation, the last Ester died in 1985. Is that cultural tradition and wisdom now lost to the middle class, which has the means and ability to lead the community to rehabilitation?

Gradually Harmond discovers that social responsibility and morality don't go as deep as he thought. On the one side are the development, his upwardly-mobile wife and his partner, Roosevelt Hicks; on the other are Old Joe and Sterling, who speak in garbled, emblematic ways, of deeper values.

Barlow and Wilks, Harmond learns, are names that go back to 1904 and "Gem of the Ocean." Wilson loads the dice by making the conflict messy and personal. But properly understood, isn't the past always personal?

In the place of the violence, passion and tangible ghosts of Wilson's earlier plays, "Radio Golf" offers measured debate. But gradually the ground shifts. Roosevelt's success is revealed to have white power brokers at its core. Harmond, who intends to bridge the gulf between black and white, is forced to make choices.

It's hard to imagine a more personable Harmond than Harry Lennix. Calm, self-possessed, handling phones, files and the language of civics with practiced ease and really lisatening, he inspires complete confidence: I'd vote for him for mayor right now. But his vulnerability grows, peaking in a brilliant piece of blocking by director Leon, who strands him weakly between Roosevelt and Sterling in the climactic, insult-spitting battle in their class warfare.

John Earl Jelks as Sterling and James A. Williams as Roosevelt are worthy adversaries. Sterling is the same man who 28 years earlier was the young central character in Wilson's "Two Trains Running," pursuing the waitress, studying black is beautiful and going to Aunt Ester for spiritual advice. Now he's a self-reliant handyman, at peace with present and past.

Roosevelt is new to the cycle in every way. No simple stooge of white power like Caesar in "Gem of the Ocean" (although Caesar wasn't really simple, either), Roosevelt has sympathetic goals. But right off something is wrong. His love of golf, he says, makes him feel "truly free for the first time." Is this what black freedom has come to? What golf really means to Roosevelt is the backroom deal.

The spiritual heart of the play rests in Old Joe, played by Wilson veteran Anthony Chisholm with rich idiosyncrasy. Old Joe always strikes out on tangents that turn out to lead straight to important truths. The underwritten Mame is the least of the roles, but simply by lending her presence, Tonya Pinkins gives her significance.

This script incorporates the final changes made by Wilson during summer, 2005. They are not in the November, 2005 American Theatre magazine text which was the basis for the Post-Gazette's April 29 feature on "Radio Golf," but were added by Leon and dramaturg Todd Kreidler in the regional theater productions that led to the arrival on Broadway.

The changes are mainly small. A Pittsburgher appreciates the switch of one misplaced reference from Murray Avenue to Ellsworth. A softer final speech for Mame alters the balance of sympathy. And taken altogether, the changes move the play more quickly, sharpening its conflicts.

They say that the house at 1839 Wylie has been abandoned. But has it? For a Pittsburgher, "Radio Golf" asks whether we have abandoned the Hill or not.

"Radio Golf" is at the Cort Theatre, 48th St. east of Times Square; call 1-800-432-7250.