August Wilson’s Two Trains Running
At Hartford Stage
By: Karen Isaacs - Feb 11, 2025
Urban renewal we now know destroyed black communities in many cities. August Wilson’s play Two Trains Running gives us a glimpse of its effect on individuals in Pittsburgh’s Hill Neighborhood in 1969.
The play is at Hartford Stage through Sunday February 16. However, this production doesn’t solve some of the problems with the work. It certainly isn’t of the same caliber as Wilson’s Ma Rainey, Fences or The Piano Lesson, other plays in Wilson’s American Century Series: plays about the African American experience in each decade of the 20th century.
The title comes from Wilson’s lines “There are always and only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both.” In this play, Wilson juxtaposes the funeral home across the street with the group of men gathering at the diner, trying to live their lives.
The setting is a diner or neighborhood eatery, where a few men gather and talk. During the nearly three-hour play, we learn about each of them. The owner of the restaurant (and the building) Memphis has the most complex backstory. He left the South after he was cheated out of his land; he arrived in Pittsburg and opened the eatery which was very successful. Now, as redevelopment is moving into the neighborhood and storefronts become empty, the clientele has dwindled. The city is about to make him an offer to purchase the building, and he is determined not to be cheated again: he wants his $25K for the property.
We know much less about the other men. West is a very successful undertaker who also owns other properties; he keeps offering Memphis money – more than the city will offer him says. Holloway hangs around the restaurant, the elder “sage” of the group. He does talk a great deal about “Aunt Ester” who supposedly can provide guidance/clairvoyance and who, he says, is 300+ years old. He recommends that the other men visit her.
Wolf is another regular, a numbers runner who sometimes uses the pay phone for his business, much to Memphis’ anger. In addition, there is Hambone, an elderly man who is carrying a grudge about a ham bone he believes he was cheated out of. Lastly there is Risa, the waitress/cook who Memphis seems to be constantly berating and ordering about.
Into this mix comes the young Sterling, just released from the penitentiary and looking for a job.
Over several weeks, a popular pastor is buried by West with crowds of people attending, Sterling has problems finding a job, Memphis goes to City Hall, and there is a rally for Malcolm X. But most of this is somewhat peripheral; the play is the men talking and recounting their experiences and the experiences of others. Many of them have been taken advantage of by white people.
Several characteristics are common in Wilson’s plays: focus on African American men, experiences of being cheated by white men or the government, and a degree of desperation. Each of these is present in this play. Also common are extended speeches that are often like jazz riffs and a downplaying of female characters. (Even the title character in Ma Rainey takes a back seat to a male character).
However, in this play, Risa seems merely a convenience for the playwright and not a fully fleshed out character. We never know why she cut and scarred her legs to make her “ugly”. Was she sexually abused? Why does she seem to have little interest in the civil rights movement? What does she see in Sterling, who most of the men will be either dead or back in the penitentiary quickly. Her dialogue is limited.
The acting is fine – Taji Senior does the most with the role of Risa, but the limitations of the script make it difficult to create a real person. The other performers have more to work with. Godfrey L Simmons, Jr. turns Memphis into a sympathetic and three-dimensional character. His speech recounting how he was cheated out of his land in Mississippi is heartbreaking. As Holloway, Jerome Preston Bates was sometimes hard to hear, especially when he was facing upstage. As West, the successful undertaker, Jeorge Bennett Watson creates the image of the self-contained (and perhaps self-satisfied) businessman. Wolf (Postell Pringle) and Sterling (Rafael Jordan) inject some youthful energy in the play. Jordan is excellent as the young man trying to succeed.
The direction by Gilbert McCauley is at times static. As my guest pointed out, too often everyone is seated except one man talking; then it is repeated with someone else standing and talking. The pace of the play could be picked up; at times it drags and you may lose interest.
The play opened at the Yale Rep in 1990 with Samuel L. Jackson as Wolf and Laurence Fishburne as Sterling. It opened on Broadway in 1992 with Fishbourne repeating his role.
Yet, despite these flaws, any Wilson play is worth seeing and thinking about. Tickets are available at HartfordStage.org
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