'Joe Turner'' Comes to Goodman Theatre
“When you speak of the story of the blues,” said legendary composer and band leader W.C. Handy, often called the Father of the Blues, “we can't tell it without the story of Joe Turner.”
Who?
The riveting production of August Wilson’s 1984 play, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” currently running at the Goodman Theatre's intimate Owen Theatre, may not answer that specific question. But this production mounted by the Congo Square Theatre Company takes us deep within the dark heart of the Turner era.
In the early years of the twentieth century, Joe Turner (actually Turney), brother of Tennessee governor Pete Turney, illegally forced African-American men into servitude. The song “Joe Turner Blues,” though first recorded by Handy, was sung by the black women of Memphis, whose husbands didn’t come home because they had been pressed into peonage by Turner.
“Haven’t you heard?” They would sing, “Joe Turner’s come and gone.”
The song helped inspire African-American playwright August Wilson to write the third play of his 10-play cycle chronicling the black American experience throughout each decade of the 20th century. One of his era's most distinguished playwrights, Wilson was an active mentor to Chicago's 8-year-old Congo Square ensemble until his death in October 2005. Congo Square founder and artistic director Derrick Sanders has returned the favor, crafting a moving and powerful production of "Joe Turner.''
Set in 1911 Pittsburgh, in the African-American boarding house owned by Seth and Bertha Holly, the play is a story of salvation and self-discovery. Wilson himself said that it is about “people searching, emerging from the 300-year experience of slavery dazed and stunned, just trying to get your bearings, finding out who you are and what happened to you.”
Watching the play early in its run (which has been extended from Feb. 18 to Feb. 25) was not like being in the theater at all. It was more like being a fly on the wall of an actual boarding house with its shifting roster of wandering residents. The strong cast captured every nuance of turn-of-the-century black dialect and movement.
As Seth and Bertha, Aaron Todd Douglas and TaRon Patton bounced rapid-fire dialogue off each other with the often caustic ease of a generally happy, long-married couple. Portrayed by Allen Gilmore, one of the newest members of the Congo Square ensemble, the eccentric Bynum Walker became the spiritual conscience of the play. His talk of finding one's song, one's sense of identity, could have easily slipped into caricature, but Gilmore made us believe every detail of his ecstatic visions.
There was, above all, a deep-seated intimacy to this production. As the spiritually haunted Herald Loomis (Javon Johnson), a Turner refugee seeking his lost wife, and Mattie Campbell (Tracy Bonner), a lonely young boarder, share a tender moment, their emotion became uncomfortable to watch.
“I can smell you from here,” he told her, and the audience gasped. But when she touched him, he recoiled. “I forgot how to touch,” he choked. The idea of a man being so devoid of self that he forgets how to touch a woman was heartbreaking. Johnson played Loomis as a wounded animal who doesn’t know who he is outside the confines of his cage. Joe Turner, Bynum says, stole Herald Loomis’s song.
The play has its humor and joyful moments. Molly Cunningham (Bakesta King) was funny and sassy, archly referring to herself in the third person. As the swaggering Jeremy Furlow, Daniel Bryant was flirtatious and overly self-assured, but charmingly so.
But Wilson's characters are never one-dimensional. Jeremy refused to pay the fifty-cent fee demanded of black workers for the privilege of employment, and Molly was determined to make her way in the world, despite the dangers facing a single black woman in the North. These boarding house residents were pioneers in the great migration that brought millions of Southern blacks to the North after World War I, and like all pioneers, they were on shaky ground. "Molly ain’t going South,” Cunningham said, determinedly, knowing full well that she could wind up there once again.
At its core, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is about searching and salvation – men and women searching for each other and searching for themselves. “When a man forgets his song, he goes off in search of it,” Bynum says, “till he find out he’s got it with him all the time." With this production, Congo Square honors Wilson's stunning song.
$15-$37. Goodman Theatre's Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn. 312-443-3800 or goodmantheatre.org
Who?
The riveting production of August Wilson’s 1984 play, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” currently running at the Goodman Theatre's intimate Owen Theatre, may not answer that specific question. But this production mounted by the Congo Square Theatre Company takes us deep within the dark heart of the Turner era.
In the early years of the twentieth century, Joe Turner (actually Turney), brother of Tennessee governor Pete Turney, illegally forced African-American men into servitude. The song “Joe Turner Blues,” though first recorded by Handy, was sung by the black women of Memphis, whose husbands didn’t come home because they had been pressed into peonage by Turner.
“Haven’t you heard?” They would sing, “Joe Turner’s come and gone.”
The song helped inspire African-American playwright August Wilson to write the third play of his 10-play cycle chronicling the black American experience throughout each decade of the 20th century. One of his era's most distinguished playwrights, Wilson was an active mentor to Chicago's 8-year-old Congo Square ensemble until his death in October 2005. Congo Square founder and artistic director Derrick Sanders has returned the favor, crafting a moving and powerful production of "Joe Turner.''
Set in 1911 Pittsburgh, in the African-American boarding house owned by Seth and Bertha Holly, the play is a story of salvation and self-discovery. Wilson himself said that it is about “people searching, emerging from the 300-year experience of slavery dazed and stunned, just trying to get your bearings, finding out who you are and what happened to you.”
Watching the play early in its run (which has been extended from Feb. 18 to Feb. 25) was not like being in the theater at all. It was more like being a fly on the wall of an actual boarding house with its shifting roster of wandering residents. The strong cast captured every nuance of turn-of-the-century black dialect and movement.
As Seth and Bertha, Aaron Todd Douglas and TaRon Patton bounced rapid-fire dialogue off each other with the often caustic ease of a generally happy, long-married couple. Portrayed by Allen Gilmore, one of the newest members of the Congo Square ensemble, the eccentric Bynum Walker became the spiritual conscience of the play. His talk of finding one's song, one's sense of identity, could have easily slipped into caricature, but Gilmore made us believe every detail of his ecstatic visions.
There was, above all, a deep-seated intimacy to this production. As the spiritually haunted Herald Loomis (Javon Johnson), a Turner refugee seeking his lost wife, and Mattie Campbell (Tracy Bonner), a lonely young boarder, share a tender moment, their emotion became uncomfortable to watch.
“I can smell you from here,” he told her, and the audience gasped. But when she touched him, he recoiled. “I forgot how to touch,” he choked. The idea of a man being so devoid of self that he forgets how to touch a woman was heartbreaking. Johnson played Loomis as a wounded animal who doesn’t know who he is outside the confines of his cage. Joe Turner, Bynum says, stole Herald Loomis’s song.
The play has its humor and joyful moments. Molly Cunningham (Bakesta King) was funny and sassy, archly referring to herself in the third person. As the swaggering Jeremy Furlow, Daniel Bryant was flirtatious and overly self-assured, but charmingly so.
But Wilson's characters are never one-dimensional. Jeremy refused to pay the fifty-cent fee demanded of black workers for the privilege of employment, and Molly was determined to make her way in the world, despite the dangers facing a single black woman in the North. These boarding house residents were pioneers in the great migration that brought millions of Southern blacks to the North after World War I, and like all pioneers, they were on shaky ground. "Molly ain’t going South,” Cunningham said, determinedly, knowing full well that she could wind up there once again.
At its core, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is about searching and salvation – men and women searching for each other and searching for themselves. “When a man forgets his song, he goes off in search of it,” Bynum says, “till he find out he’s got it with him all the time." With this production, Congo Square honors Wilson's stunning song.
$15-$37. Goodman Theatre's Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn. 312-443-3800 or goodmantheatre.org
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