August Wilson: Man of the century
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Which is worth more, a bucket of nails or a multimillion-dollar development project? Watch the two plays of the Alliance Theatre’s August Wilson Full Circle, a theatrical event more than 20 years in the making, and you’ll discover they have equal value: Each may be precisely worth the life of an African-American man.
Full Circle stages the Atlanta debuts of the final two plays in playwright August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” of heavyweight dramas. Also called “the Pittsburgh Cycle,” Wilson’s landmark project consists of 10 plays, mostly set in Pittsburgh’s African-American Hill District, with each script representing a different decade of the 20th century.
The Gem of the Ocean, set in 1904, takes place in a house on Pittsburgh’s Wylie Street, and involves two men whose fates hinge on a seemingly trivial theft from an oppressive mill. In Radio Golf, ambitious developer Harmond Wilks sets his fortune on a 1997 land deal that will launch his mayoral campaign and revitalize the Hill District, unless questions over that same Wylie Street house demolish his plans.
The Gem of the Ocean/Radio Golf twofer, playing on alternate nights and featuring the same actors doubling up, would be must-see theater based on the strength of the shows alone. August Wilson Full Circle proves even bigger than the sum of its parts. It marks the beginning of the Alliance Theatre’s 40th anniversary season, caps off the late playwright’s epic decalogue of American theater, and provides a kind of personal culmination and homecoming for director Kenny Leon, former artistic director of the Alliance.
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(Photo by Greg Mooney)
