The theater playbill for Gem of the Ocean informs us that our setting is the industrial outskirts of Pittsburgh in 1904, where street talk hints at labor tensions in the nearby steel mills, recently rendered volatile by the suicide of a factory worker accused of stealing a bucket of nails. Visitors to the residence belonging to the pastoral "Aunt" Ester Tyler, however, are advised at the door that "this is a peaceful house" so that when a distraught young man weighed down by a guilty conscience arrives seeking absolution, its mistress immediately sets about preparations for an exorcism.
Yes, you read that correctly—an exorcism, replete with charms, amulets and prayers to ancient deities. Within minutes, playgoers bemused by the banter in this de facto wayside shelter find themselves plummeted into a dramatic realm taking them on a literal deep dive into Stygian myth, as our troubled pilgrim is transported on a hallucinatory journey to the hallowed City of Bones beneath the Atlantic Ocean's Middle Passage, where dwell the abandoned dead of the slave ships.
Well, hasn't classical tragedy always concerned itself with the clash of temporal and divine power? How better for a playwright to illustrate these concepts than by proposing a hero called "Citizen" caught between the compassionate precepts of the community's tribal healer and the dogmatic righteousness of its constabulary? Viewed through the lens of allegory, the ancestral counterparts of these disciples become quickly manifest, encompassing former Underground Railway stewards Solomon "Solly" Two Kings and Eli, now the guardian of the entrance to the sanctuary; along with laconic apprentice Black Mary; itinerant peddler Selig, whose loyalty to Aunt Ester surpasses that of his trade or color (he is white); and zealous policeman Caesar.
August Wilson's prologue to what would later be dubbed his "Century Cycle"—a series of 10 plays chronicling the progress (and too-frequent setbacks) of the African-Americans populating Pittsburgh's Hill District from 1904 to 1997—has been whittled down since premiering at the Goodman Theatre in 2003, its performance time now clocking in at three hours. If that seems excessive in light of current pandemic-related protocols, audiences will be relieved to discover the cast assembled by director Chuck Smith exhibits slow-burning stamina, enabling them to sustain a brisk pace while never rushing the urgency of a resolution as satisfying as it is inevitable.
