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Review : Radio Golf
'Golf' is Wilson par excellence
Play drives home author's vision of black America
Taken from the January 24, 2007 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times
January 24, 2007
BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic
Think of it as the great summation -- the galvanic closing arguments in an intensely personal yet grandly public consideration of the case of "the black man vs. 20th century America."
Think of it, too, as the rousing, circle-closing installment in a mighty national epic -- a tale that contains all the heat of power politics, all the chicanery of big city business, all the seductiveness of new money, all the bitterness of past injustices, all the dangers of long-simmering anger, all the exhilaration of fresh possibility, all the confusion of shifting identity, all the traces of old truths, all the rituals of resistance and rebirth and all the delicious pleasure of comic riffs born out of the sheer act of survival. This, too, should be noted: There is no call for an "Amen" appended to the story, but rather, a sense that it has still not played itself out.
Of course, August Wilson's 10-play cycle evoking the nature of African-American life in each decade of the past century will go no further; the playwright died, at age 60, in October 2005. But in the months before his death, he put the finishing touches on "Radio Golf," the 10th and final drama in his extraordinary cycle. If his physical being was failing him at the time, the enduring force of his imagination and the lip-smacking delight with which he harnessed that vision for the stage suggest a life force in almost giddily triumphant mode.
"Radio Golf," which opened Monday at the Goodman's Albert Theatre as part of an August Wilson celebration, is a cautionary tale.
It is about the emergence of a powerful black "moneyed" class that began to flower in the 1990s, as college-educated blacks began taking their place in banks and boardrooms and high political offices. But it also is a stern warning to that new bourgeoisie that it is still on shaky ground and ever-ripe for corruption, and that if those who have "made it" deny their history -- and forget their fellow blacks who have failed to rise -- they will only end up fooling themselves. (Wilson, who could be very sly, also knew he would be speaking directly to a well-heeled black audience very much like the characters in this play -- men and women now sitting on the very boards of the theaters who produced his work.)
Faster in tempo than his earlier plays, and more connected to the world of upscale brand names and the marketing jargon of upward mobility, "Radio Golf" -- splendidly directed by Kenny Leon -- is a play for the age of Tiger Woods, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton's Harlem Renaissance.
Of course, the relish for language as the most valuable currency of all remains. So does the special camaraderie among men with deeply shared experience. And so does a sense that the white power structure will hold sway. But what is most dazzlingly here is that Wilson was able to use this play to magically summon all the motifs of the nine earlier dramas and to weave them into a seamless fabric. He even called on that most mythical figure, Aunt Ester -- the female Methuselah of Pittsburgh's Hill District -- who still manages to cast her spell over real estate that has spent most of the 20th century as a ghetto, but now seems headed for redevelopment -- a euphemism, Wilson reminds us, for displacement.
The "new generation" is embodied by three characters. Harmond Wilks (Hassan El-Amin, an actor so natural you completely forget he is playing a "role" at all), who appears destined to become the first black mayor of the city; his wife and adviser, Mame (Michole Briana White, doing her best in the somewhat stiffly written romantic scenes), and his college pal and business (and golf) partner, Roosevelt Hicks (James A. Williams, another actor whose lack of artifice is remarkable), who ends up co-owning a radio station and serving as a front man for white business interests.
Standing somewhere in the middle ground is Sterling Johnson, who is clearly Wilson's alter ego (and John Earl Jelks comes very close to stealing the play with every appearance). He is the man who has suffered every indignity over the decades, yet has persevered in his own mad way, working as a house painter who claims to be a member of his very own union. Finally, to top it all off, there is the stubborn "ancestor" Elder Joseph Barlow (Anthony Chisholm, the quintessential Wilson actor, whose wickedly sly timing and playful withholding of information are priceless examples of theater artistry). Old Joe, a living calendar, is the fly in the ointment. By refusing to sell his ancestral home to the developers of Bedford Hills, he keeps history alive.
David Gallo's massive set also helps keep history alive, with Wilks' storefront office bookended by the charred remains of Wilson's earlier plays -- an ash-covered barber shop and diner, with the ruins of Hill district tenements towering above.
This production -- whose full glory can barely be hinted at in a simple review -- is headed to Broadway in April, with a marathon mounting of the full Wilson cycle planned for the Kennedy Center in 2008. The scope of this playwright's monumental achievement is only just beginning to coalesce; August is only just dawning.
THEATER REVIEW
'RADIO GOLF'
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
When: Through Feb. 25
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn
Tickets: $20-$68
Call: (312) 443-3800
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