Huntington Theatre Opens 25th Season with Final August Wilson Play

By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 15, 2006

The late playwright August Wilson.

A scene from "Radio Golf" with the developers Roosevel Hicks (James A Williams) left, Harmond Wilks (Hassan El-Amin) and his wife, Mame Wilks (Michele Briana Wilks).

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Radio Golf

            By August Wilson

            Directed by Kenny Leon, Set, David Gallo, Costumes, Susan Hilferty,  Sound, Dan Moses Schreier, Music, Kathryn Bostic

            Huntington Theatre Company

Boston, Mass.

Through October 15

617 266 0800

http://www.huntingtontheatre.com  

         Now celebrating twenty five years the Huntington Theatre Company of Boston University for the fourth time opened the fall season with a new play "Radio Golf" by the distinguished African American playwright, August Wilson. He finished the play shortly before he died last year and it represented the tenth and final decade in a cycle of plays set in black Pittsburgh and spanning the 20^th century. This is the eight of his plays produced by the Huntington where he enjoyed a special and deeply rooted relationship over many years. Prior to the opening night performance there was a filmed tribute and his widow, Constanza Romero, accepted the theatre's Wimberly Award in his name.

          The VIP audience of  special guests of the university, including former president, John Silber, as well prominent members of the African American community, and the media settled in for what promised to be an historic occasion marking the end of  the phenomenal career of an individual who single handedly defined the very essence of contemporary black art and theatre. No other artist of his generation more clearly resonated with high moral purpose, humor, insight and gravitas. The audience was  up for the occasion and awarded the performers a sustained and sincere standing ovation.

              That said, I found the play which is staged in the hard scrabble office of two upwardly mobile developers in 1997, overblown, ponderous, awkward in its preachy focus on social and  political tensions between haves and have nots, and badly in need of cuts and edits as well as a faster pace in the direction. The play, which is directed by Kenny Leon, has had several stops before Boston, including a premiere at Yale. It is reported to have been sharpened and altered a lot before arriving here and is aspiring to be Broadway bound. But, if you are willing to get beyond the iconic status of the playwright, and treat the play with some objectivity there is just too much well intended overreaching and implausible plot elements to make this work compelling. There are many rich and phenomenal details, some wonderful insights and humor, but the whole is  less than the sum of its parts. The writing leans far too much on insider black anger and irony that plays to the guilt of the predoninantly white liberal audience.

           Let's start with the set by David Gallo which is just overbuilt. The action is confined to the ground level a grungy office barely renovated and functional in the dilapidated old building which rises above it with broken windows and decaying brick. Before the action began the audience anticipates scenes taking place in that second story. It never happens. So that dead space above the office just becomes an allegory. Over the course of the play it is a distraction as we attempt to focus on what is transpiring in that single room, or office.

           The plot focuses on an upwardly mobile, Cornell educated, realtor and developer, Harmond Wilks (Hassan El-Amin) who with a partner, Roosevelt Hicks (James A. Williams) have bought up and are in the process of tearing down dilapidated properties on the Hill and replace it with upscale housing and franchises such as Starbucks. We see a rendering of their planned construction. If they can pull this off Wilks aspires to run for Mayor and in that ambition is supported by his wife Mame Wilks (Michele Briana White) who is in line for a plum job in the Governor's office. She is helping to do PR for the campaign. We first sense the righteous morality and pride which will undermine Wilks when he argues with her about inviting the Police Commissioner to the ground breaking because he promoted an officer who shot and killed a black man. Her pragmatic point is just get to be the black mayor and then act on your convictions. We also glimpse his moral convictions when he advises caution to his partner who is being lured into a lucrative deal to be the front for the purchase of a black radio station by a white entrepreneur. Hicks has no moral issues with helping himself to the trough.

          In a complex back story we learn that Wilks was the dutiful son of a tyrannical father who scratched and clawed to get ahead. Another brother defied the plans of his father by aspiring to play football at Gramling. When the father cut him off the brother volunteered for the army as a means of paying for his education. He died in Vietnam and Harmond reports that the father did not even attend the funeral. So we have the contrast between the brother who followed his dream and died in the process compared to the obedient but conflicted son. This sets up the inevitable dramatic reversal. Hicks signifies the one dimensional Machiavellian ruthlessness of the new trope of a self absorbed black middle class increasingly disconnected from and indignant toward  roots and community.

           The plot turns when it appears that a shuffling old character Joseph Barlow (Anthony Chisholm) claims to still own the last standing abandoned property in the way of the development. He prevails on Hicks to act as his lawyer in a fight with city hall to get back the property. There is a second character, a former classmate of Hicks, Sterling Johnson (Eugene Lee) who is a handy man and contractor looking for work with the developers. He also proves to be a community activist. As Harmond looks into the matter it turns out that the purchase of the property was indeed handled improperly and Barlow does have a legitimate claim. The building is scheduled to be demolished and Harmond simply has to fail to act for that to happen. He offers Barlow a decent payment which the old man refuses as he would rather give the property to his daughter. We learn that although run down and abandoned it is actually a fine old house with wonderful vintage details. It becomes a signifier for what was once a vibrant community.

          As the play develops there is a dichotomy and struggle between the middle class developers, who worship Tiger Lee as their role model, and just want to play golf and dabble in politics and the downtrodden tandem of Old Barlow and the community activist Johnson. We begin to hear Hicks refer to these nuisance characters as "niggers." This theme of blacks against blacks and the class struggle comes to a head in a conflict with the intuitive integrity and values of the "niggers" contrasted with the ruthless self interest of the "negroes" (Wilks and Hicks) who think and act like white people. This seems to me the essence and motive of  Wilson's final play. It represents the phenomenon of a black middle and upper class. Will they become more white as they bite into bigger and bigger slices of the American pie? In this scenario who then represents the true black man? What happens when the black man wears a suit and tie, moves to the suburbs, and sends the kids to elite schools and colleges? Is he any less black because of success in competing in the capitalist arena of the white man?

          With its setting in 1997 Wilson's play and central thesis already seems dated. As a seminal black artist and thinker his moment and relevance may well have passed making this play all the more a period piece. In that regard it is plausible that his earlier plays touching on historic moments in black experience will prove to be more enduring. They are more rooted in his own experience. The trope of "golf" and adulation of Tiger Wood just don't gel in this play. Given its mood perhaps Venus Williams and "Radio Tennis" might have been more appropriate to the edge of arrogance and undercurrent of rage that pervades this play. The success and sophistication of Tiger Wood in mainstream white America is beyond the confines of Wilson's thinking and moral imperatives.

             We need a new generation of artists to take up where Wilson ended and move us forward into a time and national phenomenon when more and more people of color succeed and move into the mainstream. Will this infusion impact and change the very core identity of America? In today's paper, for example, there is a business page report that an Indian business group plans to purchase and rename the venerable Ritz Hotel a bastion of Brahmin Boston. Wow. The fact that in Wilson's play the morally conflicted Harmond is running for mayor in 1997 is almost quaint in view of just how many black mayors have served in major American cities. So I don't think that "Radio Golf" has a sharp read on what is going down.

           Hats off however to a terrific cast that truly gave 110% to bring this final chapter of a great career to a fitting conclusion. They deserved a standing ovation by an audience arguably not ready to ask tough questions about the work of an icon of contemporary black theatre. Perhaps that critical dialogue will spill over into the next generation. Let's hope so.