Gem of the Ocean” sailed into Mountain View over the weekend, taking the audience on a voyage through the indelible poetry and politics of August Wilson.
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley artistic director Tim Bond, in his directing debut for the company, crafts a jewel of a revival, an understated but also stirring staging of one of Wilson’s rarely seen later works.
The late great playwright famously chronicled the scope of the African American experience in the 20th century in a landmark series of 10 works known as the Pittsburgh Cycle. The works include “Fences,” “Seven Guitars,” “The Piano Lesson” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”
Though it was written late in his career, “Gem of the Ocean” is thematically the first installment of the series. Set in 1904, this is the origin story of Aunt Ester (Greta Oglesby), the nearly immortal guardian of Wilson’s beloved Hill District. Deeply metaphorical and musical, the piece is steeped in the power of myth and memory.
Bond deftly captures the symphonic nature of the language here, from the salty tales spun by Solly Two Kings (the charismatic Kim Sullivan), a hero of the Underground Railroad, to the angry rants of his nemesis, Caesar (Rodney Hicks), the town’s iron-fisted boss.
Caesar has no empathy for the struggles of his people, finally freed from slavery only to be bound by the shackles of poverty. Freedom means little, as Solly puts it, “All it mean is you got a long row to hoe and ain’t got no plow.”
As these titanic figures clash, and their city seems poised to erupt in tragedy, a lost young man named Citizen Barlow (Edward Ewell) ventures into Ester’s parlor at 1839 Wylie Avenue seeking a portal to his own redemption.
Ester, almost 300 years old, is a keeper of secrets, a healer of souls. She soon guides Citizen to the mythical City of Bones, where the souls of Africans who died on slave ships dwell beneath the sea. Barlow looks in horror at their faces, realizing he sees his own reflection in the history of his people. That painful truth, that we all stand upon the shoulders of our ancestors, echoes through the Wilson canon. The past and the present are always connected in his plays, as they are in reality.
Oglesby rivets as the regal Ester, blending down-to-earth humor with the fierceness of a high-priestess. Sullivan invests Solly with both softness and fire. He’s a born leader in an age that expects only servitude of a Black man. Hicks taps into a well of ignorance and rage as Caesar enforces the letter of the law without mercy.
Despite these sensitive performances, the production misses some of the epic emotional force its themes demand. The chemistry between Citizen and Ester’s caregiver Black Mary (Porscha Shaw), for instance, doesn’t cut as deeply as it should. The closing scenes fall short of the visceral grief they might achieve.
And yet, the unblinking clarity of Wilson’s vision of American history gives the production a brutal resonance. In the wake of the last few years, from the murder of George Floyd to the recent Supreme Court hearings, it’s hard to shake the sense that Wilson’s genius was prophetic in nature.
As Citizen slowly comes to see, you can’t move ahead until you face the terrors of the past. It might almost break you to do so but there may be no other way forward, in a nation haunted by race.
Contact Karen D’Souza at karenpdsouza@yahoo.com.
‘GEM OF THE OCEAN’
By August Wilson, presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, directed by Tim Bond
Through: May 1
Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View
Health & safety: Proof of vaccination is required; masks must be worn inside the theater
Running time/content: 2 hours, 30 minutes; one intermission; contains strong language, strobe lighting, simulated smoking
Tickets: $25-$95; 877-662-8978, theatreworks.org
