Stage Review: 'Two Trains Running' is on track Off-Broadway
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Frankie Faison as Memphis and Arthur French as Holloway are diner regulars in August Wilson's "Two Trains Running," a production of New York's Signature Theatre Company.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
NEW YORK -- Some believe the plays of August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle are already classics. So soon after their creation, this is a matter of faith. But even faith may be tested, to see whether the plays are hospitable to different interpretations, strong enough to survive less than the best actors and possessed of the staying power to reveal new facets as time passes.
"Two Trains Running," the 1960s play of Wilson's cycle, had its Broadway premiere in 1992, so it has hardly had a chance to prove its staying power. But even with the original Broadway cast led by Larry Fishburne, Al White and Roscoe Lee Browne still memorable, the current off-Broadway production by the Signature Theatre shows that, even staged with a sweeter mood, it packs a theatrical wallop.
This is the second of three Wilson plays in a whole season Signature is devoting to this one playwright's work, as is its practice. First came "Seven Guitars" (July 31-Oct. 15); "Two Trains Running" began Nov. 7 and has been extended to Jan. 28; and next comes "King Hedley II" (Feb. 20-April 15).
"Two Trains" is one of the most appealing of Wilson's cycle. The fifth of the plays in order of writing, it carries the same threat of self-destructive violence as did the earlier plays, with an angry young protagonist, Sterling, as capable of lashing out as Levee in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" or Loomis in "Joe Turner's Come and Gone."
It's no surprise that "Two Trains" should threaten violence, given its setting in a diner in the Hill District just a year after the 1968 protest, riot and fires that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King and only four years since the assassination of Malcolm X.
And Memphis' diner contains several vivid characters who feel themselves oppressed. Sterling's jobless frustration led him to rob a bank, leading to a five-year jail term from which he's just emerged. Memphis is fighting to prevent the city's taking his diner for less than it's worth and tearing it down as part of yet another Hill development scheme. And deranged Hambone is fixated on the ham the butcher, Lutz, owes him for painting his fence; he refuses to be bought off with a chicken.
In each case, it is unseen white forces against which they struggle, and Memphis also has one of those Wilsonian backstories that curl your hair, about how he was terrorized off his farm by racist thugs down South. Only Risa, the pretty waitress, is fighting something closer to home. She has scarred her legs in protest at being continually hit on sexually, and she moves like an automaton, repressing emotion so completely that we know it's just waiting to leap into flame.
The three other regulars in Memphis' diner are two busy professionals -- Wolf, the numbers runner, and West, the wealthy funeral director -- and the observer-philosopher, Holloway. He's the most content of them all, representing the community's (and audience's) interest and sympathy and providing a mirror to the others.
Money looms large in the play, and dates and other numbers, as people do their social, financial and moral accounting. So does death. The rich Prophet Samuel has died and is lying in state at West's, suggesting a flashy faith at odds with Aunt Ester, the seer and healer supposedly as old as African slavery in this country. Sterling and Memphis turn to Aunt Ester with good results, showing the importance of connecting to the ancient wisdom of the tribe.
Holloway aside, there's a lot of thwarted aspiration and resentment on the verge of explosion, at a time of explosions all around. But at its climax the play discovers release: Memphis beats city hall, Sterling has a stroke of luck, Risa finds love, and Hambone symbolically gets his ham. Demanding what's rightfully yours is the theme, and for this once, it seems possible.
That, the richness of the characters and the verbal poetry of their stories is what makes "Two Trains" so appealing, and under the direction of Lou Bellamy of St. Paul's Penumbra Theatre and guidance of Wilson's widow, artistic associate Constanza Romero, the Signature realizes most of its possibilities.
All I miss is a degree more of the danger that those frustrations, that decade and the situation on the depopulating Hill all warrant. The pace is too consistently languid; Chad L. Coleman's charming Sterling seems a shade too winning too soon; January LaVoy's beautiful Risa lacks an extra edge of anger; and even the wonderful Frankie Faison's Memphis seems to bark more than he would bite.
But Coleman and LaVoy really do sizzle when she finally opens up. And all three characterizations are in sync, suggesting that the sweeter tone is directorial.
Derek McLane (set) and the other designers provide Signature with a physical production on a par with any top-notch regional theater, an effect more focused than possible in a larger Broadway theater.
The result certainly works with the audience, which is swept along Wilson's winding byways of character and history, gradually discovering how all the stories interrelate to create a powerful parable about not settling for half.
The Signature Theatre is at 555 W. 42nd St.; 1-212-244-7529 or www.signaturetheatre.org.
Wilson notes
The frequency of Wilson's plays continues unabated. This past year, "Gem of the Ocean" has been one of the most produced plays in the country, as other Wilson plays were in their turn, and the 10th play in the Pittsburgh Cycle, "Radio Golf," which he finished just before he died in 2005, is said to be making its Broadway debut this spring.
The process of revival and reconsideration continues, as well. I know of no Pittsburgh production until Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater does its annual Wilson this summer -- since it is doing the plays in order of their writing, that should be "Two Trains."
But there is an opportunity to feed your August Wilson appetite sooner than that and closer than New York: in Washington, D.C., Ford's Theater is producing "Jitney" (Jan. 19-Feb. 18), overlapping with the Arena Stage's "Gem of the Ocean" (Jan. 26-March 18), setting up a tempting road trip. A year later, in 2008, Kennedy Center plans an all-star series of staged readings of the entire cycle.
There are also Wilson play festivals, such as last spring's at Penn State, and academic conferences, such as last spring's "Situating August Wilson in the Canon and in the Curriculum" at Howard University. This year's biggest symposium looks to be "Tell Your Story: An Interdisciplinary Conference on August Wilson and African American Theatre, Art, and Culture" (March 9-11) at the University of Maryland.
Unfortunately, Pittsburgh Playwrights' "August in February," a one-day program of excerpted scenes co-produced with the Cultural Trust, is on hold this year. And we still wait to hear whether Pittsburgh will create the sort of August Wilson festival that seems both a responsibility and opportunity.
First Published January 14, 2007 12:00 am
