GEM OF THE OCEAN. To 11 February.
London
GEM OF THE OCEAN
by August Wilson
Tricycle Theatre To 11 February 2006
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm & 25 Jan 2pm
BSL Signed 26 Jan
Runs 2hr 45min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7328 1000
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 February
Fine tribute to a dramatist who’s left an outstanding heritage.
American playwright August Wilson died last year, aged 60, having completed one of the most important drama cycles of the age; a series of 10 full-length plays chronicling Black American experience through the decades of the 20th century. Each play has separate characters, story and setting; each is serious and involving, for Wilson had the gift of creating compelling characters, letting his themes arise seamlessly through their comings and goings.
That’s true of this late play, for all its magic and melodrama (including a mill-burning, shooting and a drug-induced voyage into the conscience). It’s set at the cycle’s chronological start, in 1904 Pennsylvania, when living memories went back into the slavery era. Indeed, Aunt Ester’s aged 285, giving her a birth alongside the Pilgrim Fathers’ arrival.
More realistic are the memories of Solly Two Kings (Joseph Marcell splendidly combining a sense of the activist and a man made philosophical by experience, casually manipulating his long-wounded leg when sitting) his experiences straddling southern Alabama (still confining Black people within the state-line) and northern Pittsburgh (Wilson’s birthplace) where some white people talk favourably of slavery’s return.
But issues don’t divide simply on skin colour. The sole white character, Selig (Nathan Osgood, a grizzled travelling-salesman on the make but laid back and friendly) does what he can to help when Black sheriff Caesar comes with his six-shooter. Already castigated for his unsympathetic activities as a landlord, Caesar is rejected by his sister Black Mary for selling out to a hard-line justice that finally closes in on Ester, spirit of Black America. Amid this community is newcomer Citizen Barlow, named for the post-slavery days and needing Ester’s help, assuaging guilt for a crime leading to someone else’s death.
Paulette Randall’s excellent production plays this richly complex drama on Libby Watson’s set with walls and ceiling of a land-based room atop a rolling floor suggesting a ship’s bowed lines. Filled with symbols (the paper-boat ‘Gem’ unravels as Ester’s record of slavery), Wilson’s firm writing ensures the action’s sustained on mystic and realistic levels. The Tricycle ensemble’s African-American season blazes out in this fine production.
Eli: Lucian Msamati
Citizen Barlow: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Aunt Ester Tyler: Carmen Munroe
Black Mary: Jenny Jules
Rutherford Selig: Nathan Osgood
Solly Two Kings: Joseph Marcell
Caesar: Patrick Robinson
Director: Pauulette Randall
Designer: Libby Watson
Lighting: Ace McCarron
Sound: Al Ashford
Composer: Clement Ishmael
Voice coach: Claudette Williams
Fight director: Philip d’Orleans
2006-01-12 17:22:50