The entire flow of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is set in the kitchen of Seth and Bertha Holly’s boardinghouse—the heart of the home is an appropriate setting for a play that explores the struggles that African Americans are still going through in this play, set almost 50 years after Emancipation.
The setting is August 1911 in Pittsburgh, the site of August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 plays documenting Black life in the 20th century. Joe Turner is the second play in Wilson’s cycle and it’s now on stage at the Goodman Theatre, directed by Chuck Smith with heart, soul and revealing characterizations. The play is rich in cultural detail, and although it has light moments, it takes a piercing look at the emotional, physical and economic troubles that these Pittsburgh boarders are suffering.
It’s early morning and Seth (Dexter Zollicoffer) and Bertha (TayLar) are having coffee in the kitchen. Seth keeps his eye on Bynum Walker (Tim Edward Rhoze) in the backyard. Seth complains about Bynum’s odd spiritual activities. Bertha, a warm and practical woman, tells him not to worry because Bynum isn’t bothering anyone.
Bynum is a conjurer, a charismatic character; his spiritual skill, we learn later, is that he’s a “binding man.” He is able to bind people, binding a man and woman to each other. “My daddy,” he says later, “had a healing song” and was able to heal people. His father told him to find his own song and Bynum has a binding song. In act one, Mattie Campbell (Nambi E. Kelley) comes to him for help with her man.
Bertha cooks breakfast for the boarders, including Jeremy Furlow (Anthony Fleming III), a young man who plays guitar and likes to party. The cops picked him up last night, he admits to Seth, but for no reason, and no, he wasn’t drunk.
Making a dramatic entry is Herald Loomis with his young daughter, Zonia. They are looking for a place to stay for a week, while Loomis seeks his estranged wife, Martha. Loomis, in an intense performance by A.C. Smith, is wearing a long heavy coat in the warm weather, his face often scowling and obscured by a hat. We learn later that Loomis was recently enslaved by Joe Turner, the “mancatcher,” for seven years.
Zonia (Kylah Renee Jones) escapes from the grownups to play in the backyard, where she shares a few scenes with Reuben (Harper Anthony), a neighbor boy.
Other people arrive to board with the Hollys, including Molly Cunningham (Krystal V. McNeil), to whom Jeremy is attracted, and later, Martha Loomis herself (Shariba Rivers).
One of the most lively and lighthearted scenes in the play comes at the end of act one, when the group, after finishing Bertha’s chicken dinner, dance the “juba,” an African call-and-response song and dance that involves stepping, stomping and body percussion. The pleasure is dramatically halted when Loomis enters and demands they stop the singing.
Goodman was the first theater in the world to produce the entire 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle, from 1986 to 2007. Director Chuck Smith, who knew August Wilson, has directed several Wilson plays including the recent Goodman revival of Gem of the Ocean, Two Trains Running, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. His sterling cast gives a powerful performance of this story of Black Americans living in the North in the years before the Great Migration.
The warm and cozy set design of the Hollys’ kitchen (by Linda Buchanan) is framed by two columns and cross-stage shelves stocked with goods such as furniture, luggage and farming and household implements. The dramatic lighting is designed by Jared Gooding with sound design and composition by Pornchanok Kanchanabana. Costumes are by Evelyn Danner. Stage manager is Beth Koehler.
August Wilson wrote his Pittsburgh Cycle (also known as the American Century Cycle).to express the Black experience of the period in the poetic language of Black life. Nine of the plays are set in the Hill district of Pittsburgh in different decades. (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago.) Wilson documented the physical and emotional struggles of African American people since Emancipation and its continuing toll on their economic and political lives. His plays often include supernatural elements—some form of superstition, ancient beliefs or tradition.
The original working title of the play was Mill Hand's Lunch Bucket, the title of a painting by Romare Bearden, who Wilson called one of his artistic influences. The title Joe Turner's Come and Gone is a line from the refrain of an early blues song titled “Joe Turner.”
Joe Turner never appears in the play, but he represents the evil of the Southern racist white man. As dramaturg Neena Arndt explains in her playbill essay, he was a “mancatcher,” who in the early 20th century captured and re-enslaved sharecroppers by accusing them of crimes and forcing them to labor on a chain gang.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone continues at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., through May 19, with performances Wednesday-Sunday. Tickets are $35-$90. Running time is 2.5 hours including one intermission.
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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