August Wilson was America’s William Shakespeare — surely we all can see this by now — and his play “Gem of the Ocean,” now in rich revival at the Goodman Theatre, was his version of “Macbeth.”
The late Wilson wrote a play about the Black experience in America in each decade of the 20th Century. He didn’t write them in order and “Gem,” which premiered at the Goodman Theatre in 2003 in a fascinating work-in-progress production I well remember, was one of his last efforts. He once told me he’d been reluctant to take on the first decade of the 20th century.
By the time he wrote “Gem,” Wilson had introduced recurring characters into his oeuvre. Increasingly, his linchpin had become the character of Aunt Ester, a former slave as old as America itself (you might think of Aunt Ester as the dramatic prototype of the “1619 Project” that came years later). All of Wilson’s work had been informed by a desire to impart two great lessons to Americans, especially Black Americans. One was that the rule of law did not necessarily equate to moral righteousness. The other was that we all stand on the shoulders, and upon the sacrifices, of those who have come before us.
Wilson’s plays, of course, mostly concern the descendants of the scourge of slavery, America’s original sin. But the chronological moment of “Gem,” which is set in 1904, meant that Wilson could include those who had been in bondage themselves in their youth. Ester, who became his moral consciousness and who is played by Lisa Gaye Dixon in director Chuck Smith’s new production, was one. And in the characters of Solly Two Kings (James A. Williams) and Eli (the great Wilson whisperer A.C. Smith), the writer forged former participants in the Underground Railroad, Black men who had ushered others toward freedom.
But that’s not all that separates “Gem” from Wilson’s other plays. For most of them, he was happy to write within the penumbra of American realism. But for “King Hedley II,” he had decided to write a Greek-style tragedy. And “Gem” was his most explicit foray into the spiritual and the supernatural as the young character Citizen Barlow (Sharif Atkins) is led by Ester and Black Mary (Sydney Charles) back to the City of Bones, a reckoning with the ancestors who did not survive the Middle Passage and who demand attention from a searching character whom Wilson clearly intended to be an emblem of young Black men of the entire century, not to mention the one we are living though today. As with “Macbeth,” there is tension between what seems to be human beings making decisions for their own well-being or in service of their own ambitions, and forces they can neither understand or control. Both plays take characters and lead them inside themselves; colliding supernatural forces of good and evil clash on the stage before you.
The evil in this play is a Black sheriff, the aptly named Caesar (Kelvin Roston, Jr., in a blistering performance as a character bereft of self-awareness), a man who keeps order, or so he thinks, but whose power ultimately collapses under the moral weight of Aunt Ester and all she can summon.
Weighty matters, for sure. This is a full theatrical experience, coming in at three hours and 20 minutes, which is shorter than the running time in 2003, but still a hefty period of time, given COVID-19 and masks. I’d argue that Act 2 here could pick things up, pacing wise. It loses some of its momentum, partly I think because the no-nonsense humanity of the characters gets overly subjugated to the symbolism of the play. That’s always a healthy tension in anything by Wilson.
But those are minor quibbles. All seven performances here compel (Atkins is especially on fire), and the set from Linda Buchanan is an epic piece of design, rooted in the sanctuary of a house that a descendant of Caesar’s tries to knock down in the 1990s in “Radio Golf,” but also recalling the ships that forged the City of Bones, antecedent of America.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Gem of the Ocean”
When: Through Feb. 27
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 3 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: $25-$80 at 312-443-3800 and www.goodmantheatre.org