Playwright: August Wilson. At: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Tickets: 1-773-753-4472; wwwCourtTheatre.org; $45-$65. Runs through: Oct. 11
Gem of the Ocean is the ninth play August Wilson wrote in his great cycle of 10 plays about African-American life in the 20th century, but it's the first in chronology, set in 1904. As are most of the plays, it's set in the Hill District ghetto of Pittsburgh when it still was a vital community, with great homes and important people as well as ordinary folks.
Gem of the Oceana slave ship's nametakes place in one of the great houses, home to revered healer Aunt Ester ( Jacqueline Williams ), who says she's 285 years old. She's spoken of several times in Wilson's Century Cycle, but she appears only in this play in which she conducts a soul-cleansing spirit journey for the troubled young hero, Citizen Barlow ( Jerod Haynes ). Several characters, notably brother and sister Caesar ( David Alan Anderson ) and "Black" Mary Wilks ( Tyla Abercrumbie ), are names that recur in following plays as their descendants populate other works in the Cycle. Several more characters were born into slavery and are veterans of the Underground Railroad. Gem of the Ocean, then, is intended as a bridge between the past and future of African-American life and sets the stage for the plays which follow it chronologically, even if not written in sequence.
It's beautiful, mystical and frequently warm and humorous but also hard-edged as Wilson doesn't hesitate to illustrate conflicts which sometimes lead to Black-on-Black violence. The play's antagonist is the appropriately named Caesar Wilks. Narrow-minded and doctrinaire, he focuses his anger and suspicion on his own people. He's the arm of White Man's Law on The Hill, wearing a badge and carrying a gun which he doesn't hesitate to use.
This worthy production reveals the pleasures and power of the play in the richly-detailed characters and lovely language, but it still needed time to gel as of the second performance, which I saw. The highly-respected and capable Williams took over the pivotal part of Aunt Ester late in rehearsals ( due to the illness of the original actor ) and was not fully on top of the role. Without question, she will be by the time you read this. The cast around her is splendid, colorful and nuanced, made up mostly of seasoned Court Theatre and Chicago veterans such as A. C. Smith, Alfred H. Wilson and Steve Schine. If there's a weakness, it's director Ron OJ Parson's decision to downplay the mystical spirit and environment of Aunt Ester's household in favor of realism and a matter-of-fact approach to character and action. Only Jack Magaw's scenic designthe great beams of the house looking like the ribs of a shipoffers physical connection to slave history and the ship Aunt Ester conjures to carry souls on spirit journeys.