The August Wilson theatrical family celebrates again on Broadway

It was too big to take it all in -- not just the play, but last Thursday's opening night party.

That's also true of August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," big, thrilling and mysterious, often cited as his personal favorite among his 10 Pittsburgh Cycle plays. I heard him say that several times, but perhaps his more considered statement was that he regarded Herald Loomis' vision of the city of bones (the mid-Atlantic graveyard of the slave ships) as his finest achievement.

Anyway, I've had my say about the Lincoln Center revival in today's review (click here). And you can read more than a dozen other reviews on the Lincoln Center website. 

[On the right: Constanza Romero, August Wilson's widow, and Bartlett Sher, "Joe Turner" director, being photographed outside the theater.]

But first, the party. Opening nights on Broadway traditionally start early, a legacy of the day when the critics had to be given extra time to sprint to their papers and file their reviews for the next morning. Although for some years critics have actually been invited to the final previews, the early opening survives, perhaps mainly to give the post-show party more time.

Last Thursday's "Joe Turner" opening was slated for 6:30 p.m.; my host, Ann Cattaneo, told me it would be at 6:45; and it actually got under way at 7:05. It came down at 9:50, a relatively trim 2¾ hours -- it had certainly been longer when I saw it two weeks earlier with a van load of students from my August Wilson course at Pitt.

So we were partying by 10, since the site was just a couple of doors down 44th Street at the Millennium Broadway Hotel, familiar to me as one of the two hotels we use for our PG Broadway ShowPlanes. The "Joe Turner" party took over the whole of the hotel's eighth floor, several large rooms opening onto each other, with what seemed like a half-dozen big buffet lines laden with not just a post-show snack but a real banquet.

I can't even guess how big the crowd was -- 300? 500? More? This is what it means to have an institutional producer -- few commercial producers would offer such hospitality.

[On the left, Pittsburgh actress/producer Tamara Tunie and actor/director Ruben Santiago-Hudson.]

(Disclosure: my essay on the Pittsburgh Cycle and the Hill District is one of seven essays, poems and interviews in the "Joe Turner" issue, No. 48, available at the theater for a donation of $1. Or you can subscribe. Or download the essays from the Lincoln Center website. For a complete archive of past issues, go to the LCTR website -- but there, the most recent issue now available is No. 45, Spring, 2008.)

 The party was most fun as another of the recurring gatherings of the August Wilson Theatrical Family, a movable feast I've been able to dip into at other openings over the years. I'm always interested in touching base with the actors I know from past shows, many of whom I've interviewed.

[On the right, Michael Cummings (Ruben), Amari Rose Leigh (Zonia) and Danai Gurira (Martha).] 

But first comes the real family, represented on this occasion just by August's widow, Constanza Romero, and his oldest daughter (by his first marriage), Sakina Ansari, plus Dena Levitin, Constanza's assistant in managing the estate. All three were their usual friendly selves.

This was very much Constanza's party, of course -- it was her and August's friendship with Bartlett Sher when he ran the Intiman Theatre in Seattle that led to her approving him to direct this "Joe Turner," the first non-African American to direct one of the plays on Broadway. I was happy to talk with her at some length about her plans for August's papers and unpublished works.

They and others asked about Pittsburgh's August Wilson Center for African American Culture, which plans a soft, ceremonial opening sometime in the next few months and the real thing in the fall. I had to explain, as usual, that the Center's name doesn't mean it will be a center for the study or celebration of August Wilson. Although his work is among the performing and visual art it will celebrate and present, it is the August Wilson Center mainly in the same way that the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center also honor their namesakes. 

Chief among the stalwarts of the theatrical family I talked with at the party were Anthony Chisholm, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, S. Epatha Merkerson, Paul Butler and Willis Burks II. I spotted Samuel L. Jackson (also the husband of LaTanya Richardson Jackson, playing Bertha). 

[On the left, Amari Rose Leigh (Zonia) poses for a picture with Marsha Stephanie Blake (Mattie); Sakina Ansari is in the middle rear.)

Those with a Pittsburgh connection I was able to talk to included Homewood novelist John Edgar Wideman (my first time to meet this handsome man -- he told me about one long encounter with August, a new friendship cut off by his early death); old friends Tamara Tunie of Homestead and CMU and Kent Gash, also of CMU; Elizabeth Van , who directed "Piano Lesson" at CMU last year; Dormont's Stephen Flaherty and his two partners, (personal) Trevor Hardwick and (artistic) Lynn Ahrens; and Michael Mitnick, young playwright with a future.

I also talked with most of the cast members, especially Ernie Hudson (Seth), Marsha Stephanie Blake (Mattie), Danai Gurira (Martha), young Amari Rose Leigh (Zonia; she was delighted to hear her character was named for August's grandmother); and understudy Nyambi Nyambi, who told me he'd found two of the characters' names in blues songs.

[On the right, at the end of the party: Constanza Romero and Dena Levitin surrounding actor Anthony Chisholm.]

Among August's many accomplishments, he could take pride in providing artistic opportunity and challenge to such a large and talented theatrical family.

And if a fraction of those I've offered to take on a tour of August Wilson's Hill take me up on the offer, I'm going to be busy.