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Photo: Julieta Cervantes Nearly 40 years after its debut, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” has returned to Broadway. The second installment in legendary playwright August Wilson’s “The Century Cycle,” “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, grapples with Black life in the decades after Emancipation. Directed by Debbie Allen, the emotionally gripping play is set in a Pittsburgh boarding house. There, Seth Holly (Cedric the Entertainer) and his wife Bertha (Taraji P. Henson in her Broadway debut) welcome boarders searching for salvation, freedom from the oppressive South and new opportunities in the North. However, when a stoic drifter named Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone) and his young daughter, Zonia (Savannah Commodore) arrive on their doorstep, the Holly’s world turns on its axis. Stunningly depicted and gorgeously acted, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is a deeply grounded production about identity, home, love and how the horrors of slavery, racism and injustice continue to reverberate through time and across generations, impacting us all. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” opens in Pittsburgh in 1911. Seth, a craftsman, has just arrived home from his overnight shift making pots and pans at a factory. As Bertha whips up breakfast for their boarders, the couple peers out of the window, watching Bynum Walker (a fantastic Ruben Santiago-Hudson) dance with the pigeons and riffle through Seth’s vegetable garden. A formally enslaved man and known conjurer, Bynum has his eccentricities, but Bertha and Seth mostly let their long-standing boarder be. As the morning progresses, the audience is introduced to the other boarders living at the Hollies’ home. There’s Jeremy Furlow (Tripp Taylor), a young guitarist who recently moved from South Carolina and has found a job laying roads for $8 a week. Also, there is Rutherford Selig (Bradley Stryker), a white trader who comes in once a week to buy and sell pots and pans for Seth. Despite external stressors, including the racism that Jeremy and Seth both endure at work and the uncertainty surrounding Bynum’s rhymes and riddles, the Holly’s boarding house is full of love, warmth and joy. David Gallos’s scenic design showcases a modest but welcoming home where Bertha’s biscuits bake in the oven, a box of dominoes lies tucked on a side table, and warm coffee heats on the stove. However, the atmosphere – and the lightning by Stacey Derosir shifts after Herold arrives at their doorstep, requesting a room and the whereabouts of his estranged wife, Martha (Abigail Onwunali). Bertha is immediately enamored with Zonia and eagerly takes her under her wing. Yet, Seth and Bynum are skeptical of Herold, whose torment and anguish cloaks him better than his long grey coat. While the older men are fairly certain they know the woman Herold is seeking, they decide it’s in their and Martha’s best interests to remain silent. As the play continues, Herold becomes increasingly obsessed, desperate to connect to the man he once was. Meanwhile, the boarding house buzzes around him. Despite facing his own injustices, Jeremy is mostly focused on chasing skirts and finds himself entangled with two women. Mattie Campbell (Nimene Sierra Wureh) enlists Bynum’s services, desperate for some root work to get her man to return to her. Instead, she finds Jeremy to keep her company. Contrastingly, Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd) has shed any vestige of her life in the South. Decedantly dressed, in stunning dresses by Paul Tazewell, she looks ahead, determined that neither a man nor the color of her skin will hold her back. She is immediately dazzling to Jeremy, who has already hooked his wagon to Mattie. Meanwhile, Zonia makes a new friend in a neighborhood boy, Reuben Mercer (Jackson Edward Davis). Their joyous innocence depicts the newest generation of Black Americans who won’t contend with enslavement but will be forced to confront the terrors of Jim Crow. The audience also learns the reasons behind Herold’s torment. In addition to his wife vanishing, he was illegally captured by Joe Turner, the brother of the governor of Tennessee, and forced to work on a chain gang for seven years. The enslavement and separation from his family warped his mind. For Herold, Joe Turner has entirely stripped him of his sense of self. Just as it did when it first debuted on Broadway in 1989, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” remains timeless. Though she doesn’t have much to do, Henson and the rest of the cast, including the younger actors, are exceptional. Bursting with heart and humor, the production showcases all of the intricacies and beauty of Black American life, the never-ending costs of slavery, racism and discrimination and how Black people flourish and move forward despite it all.
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