Radio Golf
By Trip McCormickRadio Golf
September 5 - 28
Anthony Bean Community Theater
www.anthonybeantheater.com
1333 South Carrollton Ave.
862-7529
Call for tickets
This month, the Anthony Bean Community Theater presents Radio Golf, the culmination of iconic playwright August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle.” The cycle, consisting of ten plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th Century, examines the African-American experience in the United States largely through the microcosm of Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Combining the frank self-awareness, tender humor, and cautious hope indicative of Wilson’s work, Radio Golf rephrases the questions posed throughout the cycle: What does it mean to be black in America, and what is the way forward for those who are?
As the 1990s came to a close and, with them, the 20th century, there was one man who had surpassed perhaps all others at a difficult, dangerous and, in the eyes of black America, dubious task: playing a white man’s game—and winning. That man, of course, was Tiger Woods. (One wonders if, had Mr. Wilson lived a little longer, he might have been tempted to write an eleventh, supplemental volume in this election year of 2008).
Harmond Wilkes, an Ivy-educated businessman, has also made his way, and has staked his hopes of becoming Pittsburgh’s first black mayor largely on his investment in Bedford Hills Redevelopment, Inc. The project envisions an apartment megaplex, complete with the modern urban amenities of Starbucks and Whole Foods. Since his Cornell days, Wilkes has taken comfortable residence in the leather and mahogany of boardroom life, and therefore must rely on his partner, Roosevelt Hicks, to make the necessary community overtures ensuring smooth sales of the real estate needed to carry out the venture. Hicks, a fast-rising bank VP, turns to the radio business to get his message out.
Hicks’ broadcasts often come back to the game of golf. He encourages children to embrace the game, just like Tiger did, as a means of escaping poverty and creating opportunity—after all, it was during a golf game that the Bedford Hills Redevelopment project came his way. Hicks’ role as the conflicted/confused hinge between cultural loyalty and economic advancement may be obvious, but it is no less poignant and complicated for its blatancy.
On the other side of Hicks is Elder Joseph Barlow, the stubborn holdout taking up crucial building space in the middle of a block of eager sellers. Barlow owns the house once inhabited by Aunt Ester, the emblematic matriarch woven throughout Wilson’s cycle. Barlow has hired a man named Sterling Johnson to paint the house. Johnson, in Aunt Ester’s absence, assumes the role of the community conscience.
Radio Golf operates on more than one level, as do the other nine Pittsburgh plays. On the one hand, it is a frank historical snapshot of the prevalent issues facing black America at a given time and place in the 20th Century. But, taken with the rest of the cycle, it is the closing chapter of perhaps the most thoughtful and comprehensive dramatic exploration of the African-American experience throughout the American Century.
At a time when New Orleans is struggling as much as ever to define racial roles and relations in the community, ABCT presents its seventh selection from Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. Radio Golf stars local stalwarts Wilbert Williams, Gwendolyne Foxworth and Loren Blanchard.