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Theater Review | 'Radio Golf'

In the Rush to Progress, the Past Is Never Too Far Behind

Radio Golf

An elegy whispers beneath the energy that animates “Radio Golf,” the last play by August Wilson. The production that opened last night at the Cort Theater, directed by Kenny Leon, has the crackle of a bustling comedy crossed with an old-fashioned melodrama, in which scenes end with surprise revelations or personal declarations of war.

But a sadness runs through the liveliness: a throbbing lament for a lost time, a lost civilization, a lost language. The symphonically rich and idiosyncratic talk that once rang through the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the African-American neighborhood where most of Mr. Wilson’s work is set, can be heard only faintly now. Pittsburgh, it would seem, has been stripped of its poetry.

“Radio Golf,” completed only months before Mr. Wilson’s death in 2005, is the final, and in dramatic terms the thinnest, work in his magnificent 10-play cycle about the African-American experience in each decade of the 20th century. Though the plays, which have been staged during the past 25 years, were not written in chronological sequence, this one appropriately takes place in the twilight of the 20th century, in 1997.

As Mr. Wilson portrays them, the 1990s are an arid, soul-sapping time for the black man. This is because his characters at last have the chance to enter the white man’s kingdom of money, stocks and bonds and real estate and takeovers and, oh yes, the moneymaker’s favorite pastime, golf. A poster of Tiger Woods figures in “Radio Golf,” and it says much about the play’s priorities that tearing it down becomes a small moral victory.

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From left, John Earl Jelks, Anthony Chisholm and Harry Lennix in the Broadway production of August Wilson's play "Radio Golf."Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

“Radio Golf” centers on the Faustian figure of Harmond Wilks (Harry Lennix), a real estate developer poised to run for mayor of Pittsburgh. Harmond’s wife, Mame (Tonya Pinkins), is in line to be head of the public relations office of the governor of Pennsylvania. And Harmond and his longtime friend Roosevelt Hicks (James A. Williams) are on the verge of clinching a big redevelopment deal to revitalize the Hill, erasing its history in the process.

“This is the big time,” Roosevelt says to Harmond, “nothing but blue skies.”

But there’s a blot on those skies in the form of a house that must be torn down to make way for a new shopping and apartment complex (which will include Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, of course). The address of that house is 1839 Wiley. And if you know your August Wilson, you know this was the address of the ancient Aunt Ester, the former slave who lived for centuries on the Hill as the embodiment of a past that must never be forgotten.

If the ambitious Mame and Roosevelt are the faces of the future, two men named Sterling Johnson (John Earl Jelks) and Elder Joseph Barlow (Anthony Chisholm) are the voices of the past, spiritual children of Aunt Ester. To his surprise, Harmond feels the force of both sides, and “Radio Golf” unfolds as a battle for his soul. The schism is manifest even in David Gallo’s astutely divided set, which pits the sterility of Harmond’s real estate office against the rich squalor of the abandoned businesses that surround it.

It’s rare that an August Wilson play can be parsed so neatly into a war of good versus evil, or into characters who are more notable for what they signify than who they are. But in a play that is closer than usual to the period in which he was writing, Mr. Wilson appears to have felt an urgency about articulating what he saw as the clear and present danger of assimilation.

In a climactic, crowd-rousing moment, Roosevelt, who turns out to have the moral depth of the financial shark played by Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” is denounced as “a Negro.” His accuser is the poor-but-truthful Sterling, who tells him: “Negroes got blindeyetis. A dog knows it’s a dog. A cat knows it’s a cat. But a Negro don’t know he’s a Negro. He thinks he’s a white man.”

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Harry Lennix, left, and James A. Williams in “Radio Golf.”Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

In dramatic terms, Negroes, to use Sterling’s parlance, are certainly less interesting than their opposites, which the play describes with an unprintable word. These are the characters who have usually dominated Mr. Wilson’s plays: individualists who stylishly improvise their way through the sweet-and-sour jazz of life on the Hill.

Roosevelt, Mame and Harmond are, by contrast, a bland breed. They converse in a sanitized language (even when the words are blue) flavored by corporate-speak and mainstream advertising. It feels appropriate that the anthem of Roosevelt’s and Harmond’s friendship is not some frisky blues number but “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.”

On the other hand, Sterling, a construction worker who is his very own union, and Joseph, one of those crazy old sages who show up throughout Mr. Wilson’s work, betray the too-clean edges of the cookie cutter. They aren’t conflicted about what they believe in, any more than Mame and Harmond are. And Mr. Lennix’s Harmond is too passive a creature, a chalkboard for the diagramming of opposing arguments, for us to care much personally about what happens to him.

The momentum of “Radio Golf” is all in its twisting plot, which suggests a financial suspense drama like “Other People’s Money” crossed with the hopeful populism of a Frank Capra movie, in which a confused man discovers the decency within.

On that level, “Radio Golf” has an engaging snap. It definitely feels tighter and sharper than it did when I saw it in New Haven two years ago. Mr. Leon keeps things moving at enough of a clip so that even what are essentially economics lessons have a theatrical zest. And the performers never drag the pace or muddle clarity. Mr. Jelks, in particular, is outstanding, though he also has the most fully detailed character to work with.

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Tonya Pinkins and Harry Lennix in "Radio Golf."Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Still, it’s hard not to miss the music that brought such distinctive and seductive life to the other plays in the cycle. It is Mr. Wilson’s point, of course, that when people cut themselves off from their heritage, they cut themselves off from the source of their song.

It’s a heartening sign when Harmond, the imperiled Everyman of this drama, shows that he at least hasn’t lost his instinct for such music. Listen to his description of first seeing Mame: “It was raining. I thought she was gonna melt. The rain look like it hurt her. Like the two wasn’t supposed to go together.”

In Mr. Wilson’s world, there’s hope for any man who can talk like that. The song of the Hill, it seems, hasn’t ended, after all.

RADIO GOLF

By August Wilson; directed by Kenny Leon; sets by David Gallo; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by Donald Holder; music composed and arranged by Dan Moses Schreier; dramaturge, Todd Kreidler; production manager, Aurora Productions; production stage manager, Narda E. Alcorn; executive producer, Nicole Kastrinos; general manager, 101 Productions Ltd. Presented by Jujamcyn Theaters, Margo Lion, Jeffrey Richards/Jerry Frankel, Tamara Tunie/Wendell Pierce, Fran Kirmser, Bunting Management Group, Georgia Frontiere/Open Pictures, Lauren Doll/Steven Greil and the August Wilson Group and Wonder City Inc./Townsend Teague in association with Jack Viertel and Gordon Davidson. At the Cort Theater, 138 West 48th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.

WITH: Harry Lennix (Harmond Wilks), Tonya Pinkins (Mame Wilks), Anthony Chisholm (Elder Joseph Barlow), John Earl Jelks (Sterling Johnson) and James A. Williams (Roosevelt Hicks).

A correction was made on 
May 10, 2007

Picture captions in The Arts yesterday with a theater review of “Radio Golf,” at the Cort Theater, reversed the identities of two actors. In the picture on the cover of the section, the actor on the right was James A. Williams, not John Earl Jelks. In the picture with the continuation of the review, the actor on the left was Mr. Jelks, not Mr. Williams.

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