Theater review: Seven Guitars

by Mary L. Clark of John Garcia's The Column

He was born Frederick August Kittel in Pittsburgh, 1945. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade due largely to racial hostility. He went on to become the most widely celebrated African American playwright of our times.

August Wilson wrote over a dozen plays and was recognized primarily for a series of ten plays known as the Pittsburgh Cycle. Each one was set in a different decade of the 20th century. Nine of the plays took place in Pittsburgh's Hill District where Wilson spent a good portion of his youth. It was a neighborhood of economic depression which fueled Wilson's themes and his characters.

One of the cycle plays, Seven Guitars (now playing at the DeSoto Corner Theatre), is being performed by the African American Repertory Theater this month. AART is a fledgling company, founded last year by the infamous Irma P. Hall, Regina Washington, and Vince McGill, all three actors in the area and beyond. Their website states they came together because of "artistic needs not being met" and of "the resources that could fill the need."

Seven Guitars is a tragic comedy that takes us back to 1948. World War II has ended and America is renewed and reviving with financial stability, hope, and opportunity for all its citizens. Except somebody forgot to tell that to this Pittsburgh neighborhood. Money is tight, opportunities are few, and each of the seven characters struggles to find their niche, to find where they truly belong.

Right from the first scene we already come to realize Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton's fate. His friends and love salute and mourn him after his funeral. Floyd had gone to Chicago the year before with his band members determined to make it rich as a blues singer and guitarist. They actually made an album and have a hit on the radio, but a trumped up charge landed Floyd in jail for ninety days. Their dream deferred, each one has come back to old familiar places looking to start things anew and, at the same time, keep things the way they were before, which can never be.

Each person in Seven Guitars believes that some other place or some other person will be the answer to their current plight, their current existence. Floyd (Vince McGill) believes Chicago is his land of Oz. Vera (Regina Washington), Floyd's jilted girlfriend, is divided between independence and following Floyd's dream. Louise (Eleanor Threatt), for all her "I don't need no man" attitude, certainly has a way of getting a man to do her bidding. Ruby (Shundra Grubb) has come unexpectedly from Alabama searching for a new place, a new start and, possibly, a new man. Both Canewell (Elliot Gilbert II) and Red (Christopher Piper) are hunting and looking to find which ever person or deal has the money coming in. And then there's Hedley (Alonzo Waller). Hedley is the district's oracle, a person with mysterious thoughts, crazed ramblings and repeated stories everybody knows. August Wilson uses such people in each of his cycle plays as witnesses and narrators of the black man's experience in their time.

The African American Repertory Theater's production is presented in a small black box space where the stage is not raised, providing an intimacy with the actors. The set portrays the hot, cramped back area of a tenement walk up where all tenants converge to get some air, smoke, drink, play cards, get supper ready, and talk. Scenic Designer Bryan Wofford makes excellent use of the space creating a sorry piece of worn out dirt that these people try to make their own. As director, William Earl Ray moves his actors through this space well though there were several times an actor was facing upstage with dialogue, muffling an important response or monologue. A few technical items bothered me. A radio plays in the kitchen window and a rooster crows over the fence and yet the sound of both come from just behind and to the left of the audience, yanking us right out of the reality of the play. Those are easily correctable. There was also a problem with actors doing physical actions. It's called "actor's business" and one must commit to the action or it deletes from the reality of the character. The actor must really make sandwiches, really peel potatoes and really pluck something resembling a chicken. Again, easily correctable.

I consider this production an ensemble piece as they gave and took from each other without precedence to one actor. I did enjoy Eleanor Threatt for bringing an honesty and frankness to Louise. Elliot Gilbert II, as one of Floyd's blues "brothers," gives Canewell the right touch of jive bravado to make certain he is first in line with whatever is happening.

August Wilson's plays are rich stews of words – quick spicy turns and saucy phrases that blend instantly with bitter monologues of depth and despair. They savor in your mind, gathering their true flavor and meaning. The dialogue snaps from humor into pathos, from seriousness to a bawdy slip of the tongue. Director Ray paces his actors so that some of those transitions are lost to the speed of the lines. The audience needs a moment or two to catch up and absorb the potency and sting of what August Wilson has to say. However, there is a scene when Floyd's deceased mother is remembered singing a hymn, which is so slow and long that both the actors and audience struggle to come back to the scene at the end of the song.

All of these are minor flaws in a production and a company that celebrates the word because it is August Wilson's words of the black experience that is the truth teller of a history that needs to be spoken. This production of Seven Guitars celebrates those words and the playwright admirably. AART has a mission statement that reads: "to produce engaging, culturally diverse theater from an African American perspective while educating our community on African American history and the arts." With no political innuendo intended, I can easily say, "mission accomplished."