Radio Golf @ Cleveland Play House 2/10/12
Reviewed by Laura Kennelly
August Wilson became a legend in his own time for his masterful Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of ten award-winning plays about black life. Radio Golf, set in 1997, is his last.
Radio Golf plays out as a story about “soul” and “progress.” Here black characters represent universal “types” more than specific individuals as it explores the conflict between progress and tradition. It ponders the familiar question: to gain success, must a man sell out his “soul”? [pun, intended, I think, by Wilson]. Harmond Wilks (James Craven), the perfect politician and wife Mame (Austene Van), a woman as gorgeous as she is ambitious, work as a team to further his plan to become Pittsburgh’s first black mayor. Wilks’ business partner (and bank vice-president) Roosevelt Hicks (an energetic David Alan Anderson) plays a guy who is out for himself and leaves soul-searching for others. (It’s not accidental that Hicks’ hero is golf superstar Tiger Woods – and a poster of Woods beams out from the office wall.)
Craven creates a vivid portrayal of the likeable Wilks’ genuine affection for his past (embodied by the delightfully poker-faced Old Joe [Abdul Salaam El Razzac]) who traipses about in an oversized overcoat and a knit cap. Like Old Joe, it [history] just keeps turning up, tripping Wilks up, tossing him into the sand trap of yesteryear (in this case a house whose acquisition turns out to be fraudulent and whose existence reveals a family secret) as he tries to acquire a block of land for a giant government-funded project in the Hill District (a traditionally black neighborhood). The stage eventually explodes with verbal and physical fireworks when the business partners discover fundamental differences (to put it mildly).
Vicki Smith’s clever set places the audience inside the Wilks-Hicks office, making us feel like a fly on the wall watching everything that takes place. While we are “inside” the office, we can see through the glass windows to watch passers-by on the street and observe characters run in and out. Lou Bellamy, director, has allowed Wilson’s play to run its full length (I assume) and it’s very long – the first act is some 85 minutes. While Wilson had a lot to say (he died of cancer six months after the play opened), the work could use some cutting (especially in the first act). A number of people left at intermission and that’s a shame because they missed the real heart of the story that the first act was setting up.
Wilson’s Pittsburgh isn’t that different from Cleveland. Even if you don’t play golf, you’ll “get” this play and, if you’re anything like the opening night audience, you’ll laugh and cry right along with the characters.
“Radio Golf” at the Cleveland Play House runs through Sun 3/4. For tickets go to http://ClevelandPlayHouse.com or call 216-241-6000.
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.