The characteristic magic of August Wilson is never better felt than in the engrossing, moving "Two Trains Running," the 1960s play in his 10-play, century-long Pittsburgh Cycle. Given an intimate and electric staging by a dream cast at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre, "Two Trains" tunnels right to the heart of Wilson's dramatic achievement, not to mention the Hill District of his prophetic imagination.

Memphis Lee's diner is one of those community crossroads of which Wilson was sociologist, archaeologist, historian and poet. Under the sometimes irritated gaze of its owner and his waitress, gather the neighborhood philosopher, crackpot, numbers runner and mortician, and in comes an eager young man just released from jail.

It's 1969, a year after the riots that tore the fabric of the Hill, a time of revolutionary ferment and competing ideologies. Charismatic figures point down different avenues of salvation: Malcolm X, the recently dead prophet of black power; Prophet Samuel, a charismatic religious leader, lying in state at West's funeral home; and ancient Aunt Ester, legendary soul-healer carrying the weight of three and a half centuries. To them, add the numbers, the community lottery that gives hope of a financial boost.

You can imagine the recipe in Wilson's dramaturgical cookbook: "assemble ingredients and simmer gradually over a low but increasing heat."

The characters talk. They dream, plan and reminisce. Gradually Memphis' diner becomes the crossroads of African America, everyone stumbling forward under the weight of a tragic past. Each character has lost something, each is wounded, but each has a strategy for survival and dreams to match.

It's a violent time, so the talk crackles with threat. It's also very funny, with the humor of pragmatism and survival. But even as you're fascinated by the personal stories unfolding, you wonder what it's all about. Who's the central character? What's the central action or conflict? Where is it headed?

This is the quintessential August Wilson plot, meandering, touching on powerful issues, searing memories and sustaining humor, piling up parable and history. Gradually it coalesces around a powerful injunction not to settle for half, to go back and pick up the ball and live your passion. The presiding forces are love and death (the two trains of the title?), but also money, loyalty and faith.

The story, diner and most of the characters are fictitious, but the place is real, not just the Hill but the diner's location near West's funeral home and Lutz' meat market. That puts it at the confluence of Wylie, Kirkpatrick and Centre, near the real Eddie's Restaurant where Wilson and friends hung out. (Ignore the street address given late in the play: that's in homage to Wilson's mother's last house, making sense more nostalgic than geographic.)

I've seen "Two Trains Running" at least a half dozen times, in New Haven, New York and Pittsburgh, but I wasn't prepared for the fresh, powerful effect it has in this intimate setting. Director Mark Clayton Southers' diner enfolds the audience, as though we were sitting in adjacent booths. And the intimacy gives focus and force to some wonderfully naturalistic acting.

Chief in this is Anthony Chisholm, veteran of four Wilson plays in their definitive New York and London productions. He gives Memphis a cantankerous anger that highlights his tragic back story down South, but he also plays the humor of his constant irritation, the harsh wisdom of his callused pragmatism and his giddy joy when life seems to do him right.

Providing a feeling presence and acute commentary is Holloway, played by Sala Udin with a veteran actor's understated emotion and precision. The other visitor from the national Wilson acting pool is Eugene Lee, whose West is a flinty, self-made man, with no apparent social charm or spiritual faith but a hard-won practical wisdom.

The energetic newcomer, Sterling Johnson, is played by Jonathan Berry with jittery intensity and a 1,000-watt smile that marks him as a potential sacrifice or hero, we can't know which. Young Sharnece Thomas acts with consistent focus as Risa, the attractive waitress who's leery of men but creates palpable electricity with Sterling.

To Wolf, the numbers runner, Wali Jamal brings a strong streetwise presence and comic sense. And Lonzo Green is vivid as Hambone, the obsessive who turns out to be more on the ball than we initially recognize.

Not that everything is perfect. Green plays Hambone with an initial vehemence that delays our recognition of his humanity. Sterling's speech is occasionally so offhand, it's hard to decipher. The important scars on Risa's legs are barely visible.

But these are small things measured against the warmly felt reality, immensely aided by the set and Cheryl El Walker's costumes. This "Two Trains" sings a moving comi-tragic tale, lit by some of Wilson's finest prose arias on America's failures and hopes.