Wilson's 'Gem' a daring triumph
By John Fleming, Times performing arts critic
Published September 11, 2007
REVIEW
Gem of the Ocean
The play by August Wilson runs through Sept. 30 at American Stage, 211 Third St. S, St. Petersburg. Tickets $22-$35; student rush tickets, available 30 minutes before curtain, are $10. Pay-what-you-can night is tonight at 7:30. (727) 823-7529; www.americanstage.org.
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ST. PETERSBURG - In the beginning was the word, and the word was with Aunt Ester, and the word was Aunt Ester.
That, with apologies to the Bible, pretty much sums up Gem of the Ocean. Set in 1904, it is the first play in August Wilson's 10-play cycle about black life in 20th century America, one for each decade, all but one taking place in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, where the playwright was born.
At the center of Gem of the Ocean is Aunt Ester, a former slave who is said to be 285 years old and able to "wash people's souls." She lays the philosophical groundwork for Wilson's cycle with pungent application of folk wisdom, scripture and enchantment to the travails of her African-American community, populated by a collection of deeply idiosyncratic characters who bear witness to their times in luxuriant language that is downright Shakespearean in its rhetorical sweep.
It has taken 29 years for a Wilson play to be performed by American Stage, and while that is a scandalous omission in the theater's history, at least the company got things right with Gem of the Ocean, which opened Friday night. It is a brilliant production that goes to the heart of why Wilson was an American playwright to rank with Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. He died two years ago of cancer at 60.
Gem of the Ocean is not necessarily one of Wilson's truly great plays - Fences, The Piano Lesson and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom are more acclaimed - but perhaps because it came late in his career, premiering on Broadway in 2004, the writing seems especially confident. With only one play in the cycle yet to be written, Radio Golf, set in 1997, he knew exactly who his characters were and where they were headed.
Sharon E. Scott heads the outstanding cast of Gem of the Ocean, expertly directed by Bob Devin Jones. Scott is best known as a singer, and that certainly enhances her performance in Wilson's play, which is suffused with gospel and blues. But she also has great mythic presence in the role of a neighborhood sage whose remembrance of slavery is the anchor of the story.
For all the characters, slavery, the Civil War and emancipation are recent events. "You know about the Civil War?" says Solly Two Kings, a suitor to Aunt Ester, portrayed by Kim Sullivan. "That was white people fighting and killing each other like you ain't never seen."
Sullivan, in an exuberant performance, has several of Wilson's trademark epic speeches, such as an audacious riff on Paradise Lost. There is wonderful chemistry between him and Scott and Ranney, playing Eli, who lives with Aunt Ester and answers the door by saying, "This a peaceful house." Ranney is reminiscent of a performer like Howlin' Wolf in the musical numbers.
The other big role in Gem of the Ocean is Caesar Wilks, a black constable who has become the scourge of his community, as a slumlord and enforcer of the white man's law. "I'm the boss man around here," Caesar says in recounting how he made it in Pittsburgh, a huge speech that is delivered with just the right mix of aggressiveness and defensive self-doubt by Alan Bomar Jones.
Aleshea Harris plays Black Mary, a lovely young woman and sister of Caesar who is Aunt Ester's housekeeper and protege. Drew DeCaro is the only white person in the play as Rutherford Selig, a peddler of pots and pans who has a fond relationship with Aunt Ester.
Daringly, the central episode of Gem of the Ocean is a ceremony in the second act in which Citizen Barlow Leonard Williams, who believes he was responsible for a man's death, seeks to be cleansed by Aunt Ester. She makes a paper boat from her slave's bill of sale (the boat is a slave trader's vessel called Gem of the Ocean) and transports the young man to the City of Bones, the legendary underwater home of drowned slaves. This sort of magical realism would seem almost impossible to bring off onstage, yet it works and is a powerful theatrical moment.
Gem of the Ocean loses momentum in its final scenes as Wilson ties up the loose ends of his tragic narrative. At a running time of about three hours including intermission, the play takes some stamina.
Costume designer Lea Umberger's color scheme is dominated by dusky brown tones. Jeffrey W. Dean outdid himself with the impressively detailed set of Aunt Ester's house at 1839 Wylie Ave., complete with a working water pump in the kitchen. Celeste N. Silsby's lighting is beautifully evocative in the greenish blue, then smoky golden atmosphere of the seance that leads to the City of Bones. The snatches of recordings of blues, rags, field hollers and spirituals that accompany transitions between scenes create a marvelously warm, down-home feeling.
Gem of the Ocean is so rich with humanity, and this production is so fine, that it virtually demands American Stage return to the other plays of Wilson's cycle in seasons to come.
John Fleming can be reached at (727) 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com.