‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ Triumphantly Returns on Broadway

In an interview with Bill Moyers back in 1988, the late, great playwright August Wilson described his basic formula for tracing the black American experience through the 20th century. “What I do…I get from the blues,” Wilson said. “So I listen to the music of a particular period that I’m working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people.”Wilson’s writing had its own music, of course — he was a poet initially — so it makes perfect sense that Debbie Allen, an accomplished dancer and choreographer who first gained attention in Broadway musicals, would be drawn to “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” a title itself culled from a blues song. Set in 1911, when the scourge of slavery was still fresh and raw, the play is among the most lyrical and piercing in Wilson’s Century Cycle, as it’s sometimes called.Ms. Allen’s new production of “Joe Turner’s,” which marks only her second turn as a Broadway director, and her first since 2008, serves these qualities fully, with the support of an excellent ensemble. That company is led by two actors better known for their work in film and television: Cedric the Entertainer plays Seth Holly, the proprietor of a boardinghouse in Wilson’s native Pittsburgh, the setting for most of his plays; Taraji P. Henson is cast as Seth’s devoted but feisty wife, Bertha.Cedric, who appeared on Broadway just once previously, in a 2008 revival of “American Buffalo,” brings an appealing mix of wry humor and sturdiness to Seth, who repeatedly insists on keeping a “respectable” house, even as its guests make that goal increasingly challenging. Ms. Henson, a newcomer to the theater district, at least as an actress — she served as a producer for 2023’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” — is warm and funny, emphasizing Bertha’s capacity for exuberance in lighter moments.Other players, however, provide the most stirring performances. Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who has a long history with Wilson’s work as both an actor and a director, delivers a pitch-perfect portrait of Bynum Walker, the “conjure man” who introduces and sustains the play’s deeply spiritual core. “I got a power to bind people,” he explains, but later, defending himself to another character who is wary of that skill, he adds, “You can’t bind what don’t cling.”This other character, Herald Loomis, is in many ways the central figure in “Joe Turner’s,” having just endured a long, life-altering ordeal, a testament to racism’s enduring grip long after abolition had been legally ordained. A deacon by training, he has a mysterious, haunted quality that Joshua Boone captures to harrowing effect.One facet of Wilson’s genius was his ability to inject joyful, sometimes raucous humor into fundamentally dark stories; in this one, comic relief is offered in part by a young, restless musician named Jeremy Furlow, winningly played here by Tripp Taylor. An inveterate womanizer, Jeremy no sooner moves into Seth’s residence than he sets his sights on two ladies: first, the earnest, grief-stricken Mattie Campbell, then the flirty, sassy Molly Cunningham, respectively played by Nimene Sierra Wureh and Maya Boyd, both superb.“Joe Turner’s” also reminds us that Wilson, as much as any playwright I could name, not only created strong female characters but addressed women with a reverence that could never be dismissed as performative. “It’s a blessing when you learn to look at a woman and see in maybe just a few strands of her hair, the way her cheek curves…to see in that everything there is out of life to be gotten,” Bynam says at one point when he chides Jeremy for his shallow lust. “You know you done right and proud by your mother to see that.”Ms. Allen’s staging is given extra atmosphere by David Gallo’s folksy, handsome scenic design, and Steve Bargonetti lends graceful, gritty original music. Of course, the blues sing most powerfully here in Wilson’s language, and the director and her performers play it with an authority that feels as effortless as it is potent.

‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’ Triumphantly Returns on Broadway

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