King Hedley II

Okay, blame it on the recently departed Studs Terrell and his damn interview books. I had just been reading his "The Spectator", a compilation of some of his interviews of various authors, actors and other celebrities from his long-running Chicago radio program when I came across an interview that he had with the playwright under review here, August Wilson. Of course, that interview dealt with things near and dear to their hearts on the cultural front and mine as well. Our mutual love of the blues, our concerns about the history and fate of black people and the other oppressed of capitalist society and our need to express ourselves politically in the best way we can. For Studs it was the incessant interviews, for me it is incessant political activity and for the late August Wilson it was his incessant devotion to his century cycle of ten plays that covered a range of black experiences over the 20th century. Strangely, although I was familiar with the name of the playwright August Wilson and was aware that he had produced a number of plays that were performed at a college-sponsored repertory theater here in Boston I had not seen or read his plays prior to reading the Terrell interview. Naturally when I read there that one of the plays being discussed was entitled "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" about the legendary female blues singer from the 1920's I ran out to get a copy of the play. That play has been reviewed elsewhere in this space but as is my habit when I read an author who "speaks" to me I grab everything I can by him or her to see where they are going with the work. This is doubly true in the case of Brother Wilson as his work is purposefully structured as an integrated cycle, and as an intensive dramatic look at the black historical experience of the 20th century that has driven a lot of my own above-mentioned political activism. By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson's Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson's work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of "Gem Of The Ocean" (the first play chronologically in the cycle). In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in "Fences" when he (correctly) stated that there should been "no too early" in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom as means to survive in racially-hardened America. Here it is the simple common phrase "it ain't always about you" that

Wow, the god of small things must be glancing my way. The first to write about an August Wilson play! I feel honored. King Hedley II is Wilson's 8th play in his monumental 20th Century cycle, here reflecting the 1980's. Full of the pains and pressures to maintain one's dignity and relish a life constantly off-balance, the play focuses on King, who is in his 30's and living in Pittsburgh's Hill District in 1985. His face has a long scar from a razor cut by the man he later killed, ultimately doing 7 years. With him is his best friend Mister, with whom he plans to open a video store, operates as a middle man selling refrigerators and is otherwise a business partner. King's wife Tonya met him after his prison time, and can only stand so much of his anger and is not emotionally ready to take him getting arrested again, or the suggestion that he'll be in trouble again. King's mother Ruby lives with them, an ex-lounge singer, she is a hardened woman, not the woman Tonya wants to be, having been with and through men who abandoned her, were murdered or imprisoned. Her relationship with Hedley is tenuous at best. When Elmore, a longtime flame of Ruby's returns to Pittsburgh the pressures of these people's lives are boiled toward the inevitable but horrible ending. An ending that is infused with tradition and sacrifice, as the spiritual, either crazy or touched Stool Pigeon-the play's chorus-proudly observes. What makes Wilson such a master is his potent characters all of whom make strong proclamations of themselves with remarkable language. He is able to define another world, an American culture I can experience very clearly. The difficulties of being black in America are here as in his other plays, but in King Hedley II there is little joy. There is love and the need for affection, but the violence and anger of being taken advantage of, of staying true to oneself in a world where friends can be killers, or parents can abandon children takes over. There is tragedy in these people's stories. How can somebody survive and thrive in a community full of dangers and desperation in a country that is indifferent, contradictory and ever disappointing. Through Stool Pigeon Wilson informs the superstitions, the connections to the Earth, the Black American spectrum that has held onto it's spirituality, "the world that the characters turn to when they are most in need." That spirituality, for example made out in the numbers 66 and 67, which appear frequently, intense personal stories of murder and loss, black cats, hard dirt or his Falstaff like Aunt Ester's offstage presence. King Hedley II is another fabulous Wilson work. Sad and maddening, it has many highlights, symbols and wisdom. His passionate visions of each decade are all the more amazing for his subsequent and premature death the same year his final play, Radio Golf was produced.