On August Wilson's Two
Trains Running. Directed by Juliette Carrillo. Fichlander (Arena
Stage), until May 6, 2018
“There are always and only two trains
running. There is life and there is death.” And as I write, every
evening at Arena;s Fichlander Stage, a brilliant group of actors are
getting on and getting off. They are the most compelling passengers
I have come across in years of celebrating and crying about life
depicted on the floorboards of those moving trains. Here, in the
round, with pathos and irony, comedy and tragedy, life is given a
circular thrashing, only to conclude in the manifestation of an
emotional attitude, the one great playwrights have tackled before
August Wilson, and will after he is gone, namely American optimism.
Death is everywhere, from the slow
dying of restaurant and black Pittsburgh neighborhood where the drama
takes place—to be gentrified, taken over first by the city--from an
undertaker across the street who buries everybody sooner or later,
who found a sure way of making a living after experimenting as a
youth with numbers and other betting games. And we witness the
potential for death, in handguns two characters sport at a moment in
the play when the audience fears the worst, a cathartic murder, a
suicide. And we have the ageless Aunt Esther off stage, 332 years old
by one count, who defies death and who counsels those who seek her
advice to throw twenty dollar bills into the river, and to keep doing
so, until their wishes are realized.
The actors are excellent, seasoned,
sure in delivery and convincing. Some are new to Washington stages,
coming East from Seattle fiefdoms ( William Hall as West, Reginald
Andre Jackson as Wolf). But all leave the audience wanting more and
standing in ovation at the play's end—especially David Emerson
Toney booming as Holloway.
And I should not mention actors without
praising director Juliette Carrillo. The transitions she creates
between scenes, giving each character a moment in the spotlight as he
or she tussles with some deep-seated memory, accompanied by a harsh
and relentless blues, to the sweet, Shakespearean romantic
dance—think of Rosalind in As You Like It in that play's enchanted
forest-- but here we are transported by a young man, fresh out of
jail, and a beautiful girl who cut her legs in order to make herself
ugly, and to escape the eyes of marauding men, dancing in a
beaten-up, dying ember of a restaurant with only a few items left on
the menu.
One of those items, if I may stretch
the metaphor—one that informs the whole play—is dignity. What is
Man's worth? How much should the city pay Memphis as compensation
when he is kicked out? Memphis wants 25 thousand dollars, nothing
less. West (played with marvelous cynicism by William Hall) at first
offers fifteen, and then twenty, as long as he can use the restaurant
as leverage in some other insurance schemes he is juggling. Memphis,
will have none of it. Memphis had been stripped of land in the South
by an ironic clause in the deed (he would lose rights to the
property if he finds water). And how can a farmer manage without
water? So Memphis, using his smarts, finds that water. And like a
character suffering from Beckettian existence he is denied his rights
as a result
So he moves North—compelled rather,
as he has to escape some hard-arm tactics (with lynching
implied)--and he sets up the restaurant which is now both insurance
and manifestation of optimism. He will get his twenty five thousand
he says, and he will go back South and reclaim the land that
belonged once to him.
And Sterling will play the numbers Risa
gives him, seven, eight and one, for seven lashes on her left leg and
eight on her right and one in a place only she can know—Wilson is
brilliant in coaxing out our laughter in the midst of harsh and
bitter reality. Sterling will learn the location of that last cut.
And he is lucky. The numbers are called. And he is a winner, along
with a number of others in the neighborhood. So the issuer of the
numbers—the white businessman off stage—decides to cut the
winnings in half (invoking certainly some buried clause, like the one
that denied Memphis his water). So what choice do the winners have?
Accept half or go into the streets and shout (like supporters of
Black Power and the late Malcolm X, which provides another theme,
underlying this play, namely how will the black man re establish the
dignity stripped of him in slavery.
But as I survey the lines of the seven
characters in Two Trains Running I find myself at a loss about some
basic terms in describing plays. I laughed a lot during the show, so
much that I cried. Does that make this play a comedy with a bitter
backbone? A tragic comedy? But nobody dies directly on stage. A
comedy? A romance? Or maybe I should call it a bittersweet, romantic
comedy with muted tragic elements.
These elements happen off stage—the
assassination of Malcolm X, the chasing of Memphis from his land in
the South, the death of Prophet Samuel, and the dying in sleep of
Hambone. But on stage, we see characters surviving their moments in
the desert, on the plank at sea, and somehow, with their
resourcefulness or a combination of grits, intelligence and luck,
they find a way back to the deck, out of the desert. They even find
their love (Sterling and Risa), or get more than they expect from the
city, a surprising Deux ex machina--thirty five thousand dollars--not
twenty five, not a hidden clause that could lead to nothing, but
thirty five thousand dollars. We know it will help Memphis retire. We
know it won't be enough to satisfy the grandiose dreams he now hurls
to the audience. Hambone has died without his ham. But Memphis says.
“Risa, take this fifty dollars and get some flowers. Get him a big
bunch. Put on there where it says who it's from ...say it's from
everybody...everybody who ever dropped the ball and went back to pick
it up. “ He then adds that when he gets back....if I get back from
seeing Stoval (to reclaim the land he lost)...I'm gonna open me up a
big restaurant right there on Centre Avenue/ I'm gonna need two or
three cooks and seven or eight waitresses...”
Sterling enters the scene then “
carrying a large ham” as the directions state. And he says to Mr.
West “ Say, Mr. West...that's for Hambone's casket.”
Hambone finally gets his ham, after
nine and a half years of persistent effort, but only after he has
died. He is given a dignified burial. And the flowers are from
everybody who ever dropped the ball and went back to pick it up.
Congratulations, director, cast, crew,
sound designer, and shapers of set, costume and lighting, and of
course the playwright as well. Do not miss this production of Two
Trains Running. Through April 29, 2018 in the Arena Stage's
Fichlander theater.
--Indran Amirthanayagam
(http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com)
