What happens when a venerated, hundred year-old black theatre institution (the oldest one of its kind in the country) mounts a production of one of the best plays by the best American playwright? Quite simply, a magnificent and, magical theatre-going experience, that’s what happens.
Karamu House, which was on the verge of extinction not too many years ago when Artistic Director Terrance Spivey arrived on the scene to take over the helm, is celebrating its 100th Anniversary this year, and doing it in grand style. The much beloved theatre company, located on 89th and Quincy Avenue, has indeed come all the way back from the brink, and is now mounting productions that some would say even surpass the productions of the space’s former glory days.
In offering up one of the most important works of one of America’s all-time greatest playwrights, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Spivey — who directed the masterwork — has literally outdone himself. The theatre was crackling with muted excitement as the audience hung on every word uttered by a outstanding cast, performing on a perfectly designed set.
The second of Wilson’s ambitious ten-play cycle (which covered every decade of the last century), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone gives voice to the experiences of blacks escaping the Jim Crow south of the early 1900s by moving north to cities like his native Pittsburgh, only to discover that the past is never far behind. Against the backdrop of current day racial discords, the play could not be more contemporary. Some things have changed very little in the last 100 years, or the last 30 since the play was written.
Wilson, perhaps the greatest playwright of his or any other generation, had such a keen ear for accuracy, he’s able to capture the voices of his people in all of their subtle nuisances, and then places their hopes, dreams, and aspirations (as well as their fearful and nightmares) into the mouths of his characters. He then skillfully distills it into a two-hour, intensely personal experience, which causes him to rank along side all of the great playwrights who manage to expertly captured the Zeitgeist in which they lived and worked.
The play is set in Seth Holly’s (portrayed by a Cornell H. Calhoun III as curmudgeonly realist who knows that the best thing he can do for poor blacks is to not be one of them) rooming house, a crossroads of sorts for weary black travelers moving away from a great misery of the past, on the road toward an unknown future.
The talented Tonya Davis plays his wife, Bertha Holly, with all of the stern but motherly concern displayed by generations of black women who, in times of the race’s greatest desperations, took all of the weight of oppression, loaded it on their strong backs, and literally carried us ever forward towards a finish line we have yet to reach … but not because the females of our race haven’t given their all; they have.
Stellar Karamu performers, like regulars Prophet D. Seay and Butch Terry, are among members of a great ensemble of actors that include Kali Hatten, Phillia Thomas, Laprise Johnson, Kennetha Martin, Zamani Munashe, and the perfectly cast Rich Stimac, a Karamu newcomer.
But Michael May, as the brooding, menacing character of Herald Loomis, dominates the production, just as August Wilson intended. He’s the embodiment of all of the pains and sufferings … the burdens that the evils of America’s “peculiar institution” freighted black men down with. The brutal form of chattel slavery that tore blacks apart for centuries in this country (and the Jim Crow aftermath) is in large part responsible for the weakened family structures still too often found in America’s inner-cities today.
Man, this is some heavy shit going on here at Karamu.
Joe Turner is based on the person of Joe Turney (the brother of Tennessee governor Peter Turney, who served from 1893 to 1897), who illegally kidnapped freed former slaves and other blacks and rented them out to farmers along the Mississippi River. One method was to use a black confederate to mingle among other blacks and start a crap game; when enough men joined in the game Turney would swoop down with his posse, arrest them, haul them in front of a kangaroo court, which then would convict and fine them.
When they couldn’t pay their fines the men would be put into debt peonage … another form of slavery … oftentimes lasting for years. When the men were first kidnapped, days and nights after they didn’t return home rumors would begin to circulate in regards to their whereabouts: Their wives, girlfriends and mothers were likely to be told: “They tell me Joe Turner’s come and gone.” And he’d kidnapped their loved and taken them with him.
Herald Loomis is one such man who’s been driven half out of his mind after seven years of separation from his wife, who he sets out to find once he regains his freedom. He’s been on a four-year quest that takes him to Seth Holly’s boarding house. What happens then you have to find out by seeing the play for yourself, but I will tell you this: The climatic monologue by Loomis — his indictment of the God who abandoned him — is among the most powerful, strongest, and riveting in the grand panoply of American theatre history. Tears of understanding were streaming down my face like running water at the conclusion of the play. I left some of my life’s burdens on the floor of Karamu.
The only problem is, Joe Turner really has almost “come and gone.” The play ends on Feb. 15th, and rumor has it the final few performances are all sold out. The one thing we might be able to do is to convince Terrance Spivey that this masterwork needs to be held over for another month, or soon brought back. Like real soon. I want — nay need — to see it again. Call him at Karamu: 216.795.7070.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
Cleveland, OH 44106
2 Responses to “REVIEW: ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ is Outstanding @KaramuHouseInc”
Michael May
Thank you for your wonderful words of support and encouragement, both at the theatre and in this review. Terrence Spivey’s footprints are all over this production, in every character.
Michael May
Thank you for your wonderful words of support and encouragement, both at the theatre and in this review. Terrence Spivey’s footprints are all over this production, in every character.
P.S. Great historical information, too.