I am not a theater critic but I have been devoted to covering theater since my early 1980s reports on the explosion of Chicago storefront theaters for National Public radio. On The Mara Tapp Show in the 1990s, I was honored to host weekly for conversations about and offer scenes from some of Chicago’s best shows, and delighted when those interviews filled houses for our local theaters.
In 2015, at the request of friends, I started a series of emails with recommendations for shows I thought worthy of patrons. Some years later, actors, directors and publicity people in Chicago’s theater world prevailed on me to share these raves, a request I accepted, especially in light of the increasing tensions in the theater world and need to keep Chicago theaters healthy. Read more…
Find out what the critics think at the Review Round-up on the website of TheatreInChicago.com.
company during its 55th Chicago engagement. Now that’s a revelation worth celebrating!
Raves
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone
Goodman Theatre through May 19
Highly Recommended
How fitting that August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone opened a day after what would have been William Shakespeare’s 460th birthday since I’ve always considered Wilson the Bard of the Black American experience of the 20th century. His “Pittsburgh” or “Century Cycle,” 10 plays based in “The Hill” neighborhood of his native Pittsburgh that cover each decade of the 1900s, is as universal as Shakespeare’s plays about English history or troubles in Italian cities or imagined places. It’s excellent to have an American Bard because, after all, Black history is our history, and these two playwrights give us universal plots and characters with sparkling soliloquys, devastating dialog, heartbreaking humor, charismatic characters and storylines that grab us where it counts.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is the second play in Wilson’s series, set in the 1910s at the beginning of the Great Migration as African-Americans from the South headed north in hopes of jobs and better lives. As always, Wilson’s humor travels easily from everyday wisdom and chatter to laugh-out-loud commentary to profound poetry. His ear for the poetics of the mundanities of everyday life is dazzling whether he is capturing true love in the banter of a long-time couple all too aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses or the advances of a rake who hits on anything in a skirt or a man with estimable spiritual powers or a heartbroken woman.
Goodman Resident Director Chuck Smith makes sure everyone in his stellar cast shines. Dexter Zollicoffer and TayLar as Seth and Bertha Holly, are the ideal mix of love and irritation as the longtime couple in whose boardinghouse the play takes place. Tim Edward Rhoze’s Bynum Walker, a resident with spiritual powers that aggravate Seth, is a wonderful combination of assured patience and power. Nambi E. Kelley captures the fragile and wrecked but still hopeful nuances of Mattie Campbell, a beauty who gets left by the men she loves. Anthony Fleming III brings all the right impetuousness and passion to Jeremy Furlow, the often enraged and rudderless rake who breaks her heart yet again. Gary Houston’s Rutherford Selig seems like a hapless white man who stumbles in and out of Saturdays with the detritus of his wandering sales until his recitation of his ancestors’ occupations that starts with slave ships and reveals the depth of American racism. A.C. Smith, an esteemed veteran of Chicago stages, is perfection as the menacing and broken Herald Loomis. He hovers over the play, reminding us of the ugliest parts of being Black in America, caught by omnipresent chains that merely shift from slave ships to chain gangs to jails and prisons.
Linda Buchanan’s set of the boarding house kitchen, backyard and parlor is period-perfect, and made more ominous by a grey backdrop of the steel mills marking Pittsburgh’s industrialization, and the surrounding frame of the belongings of the residents of The Hill. Evelyn Danner’s costumes capture the styles of the 1910s with appropriate individual touches that offer insights into each character.
I have been fortunate enough to see each of Wilson’s plays, some more than once, and had the honor of telling him at the opening of the Goodman’s King Hedley that he was the winner of the Harold Washington Literary Award, so I have a special place in my heart for his work. This is my second time seeing Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and, as is so often the case with classic art, I found much more to love thanks to this excellent production. I urge you to take in this play for its poetry, humor, veracity and beauty before Joe Turner goes.
And now for something completely different!
This comes from my brilliant friend Danny (Alias) Duane, who not only edits my Theater Raves but keeps me in stitches. Enjoy!