Playwright: Regina Taylor. At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn. Phone: 312-443-3800; $25-$75. Runs through: April 19
August Wilson proved it could be done. He showed us that audiences would support a play where African-American citizens, speaking in long sentences, addressed their cultural history (History! Imagine that!) and its influence on their lives today, their insightfully articulate conversation proceeding uninterrupted by cartoonish fantasy-sequences, dancers wearing exotic costumes, or interludes of pop music for the benefit of groundlings unaccustomed to so many words at one sitting.
Of course, when one of your characters is a retired cabaret chanteuse and another, a guitar-strumming political activist, some singing is inevitable. Teenagers do the Twist, to varying degrees of skill, at a birthday party. And we get one inside-the-hero’s-consciousness scene of some 20 seconds duration. But at no time during this richly-textured Dickensian narrative, populated by multiple generations whose personal experiences span nearly a century to acquaint us with the old and new South (this is Atlanta in 1963), are we allowed to zone out into brainless reverie.
The plot centers on a family estate fallen into debt and facing foreclosure. Beau Forrest struggles to raise the mortgage money, even while his sister, Lily, declares their home to be everything she sought to escape. Complicating their plans is the ominous presence of Thomas Forrest, a real estate developer seeking to raze the site, with its ancient groves of Magnolia trees, where his grandfather had been a slave when the land was a plantation. A diversity of ancillary personalities also offer their observations—expatriates extolling a better life abroad, Freedom Riders following the precepts of Martin Luther King, elders of both races quietly clinging to their old ways. Oh, and give yourself a gold star if you’ve spotted the similarities to Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard.
As with Chekhov, Regina Taylor’s text asks us to absorb large portions of densely packed information in abbreviated dramatic time, making for slow orientation to our environment. But director Anna D. Shapiro, fresh from August: Osage County, is no stranger to epic neo-American Realism, and keeps the action at all times balanced and cliché-free, while the uniformly ensemble-focused cast creates microcosmic subplots to satisfy us that when one door closes, another opens, leading the way to unforeseen opportunities.
August Wilson is gone, and it remains to be seen who will continue what he began. But Taylor looks to be a contender.