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http://www.dcmdva-arts.org
"JITNEY"
CenterStage
Baltimore, MD (410) 332-0033
www.centerstage.org
January 8-February 14, 1999
review by David Sobelsohn
Ridin' All Over
In 1979 August Wilson had a job at the Science Museum of Minnesota, writing scripts for
actors who roamed the museum's anthropology floor in native costume. Wilson had written
hundreds of poems and short stories
but--except for a musical satire cobbled from some of his poems--no original works for the
stage.
One of the museum's actors invited him to attend a play. Afterwards, Wilson thought:
"I can write that." Working in a local fish-and-chips, sometimes writing on
paper napkins, he composed "Jitney!," his first realistic drama.
The rest, as they say, is theater history. "Jitney!" earned Wilson a playwriting
fellowship, and he quit his museum job. He went on to write six more plays, each
portraying the African-American experience in a different decade of the 20th century
("Jitney!" representing the 1970s). Each of the six after "Jitney!"
won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and two--"The Piano Lesson" (1990)
and "Fences" (1987)--received
the Pulitzer Prize.
But after a smash premiere in Pittsburgh (in 1982) and a successful staging in St. Paul
(in 1985), "Jitney!" stalled. Recently, starting with a June 1996 Pittsburgh
revival, Wilson has revised the play (and removed
its title's punctuation). A newly retuned "Jitney" runs at Baltimore's
CenterStage through February 14.
"Jitney" derives its name from the unlicensed, independently owned taxis
(sometimes called gypsy cabs) that bring passengers to parts of Pittsburgh avoided by
licensed cabdrivers. Like Wilson's other plays, "Jitney" has
just one set: a dilapidated storefront used as a jitney dispatch station. Service requests
come via a pay 'phone hanging on a support pillar; off-duty drivers play checkers at a
worn desk, or recline on a faded green sofa. David Gallo's splendid design includes a
transparent outside wall, through which one can see cars parked rather too close together
on a decaying, steeply graded street typical of Pittsburgh's Hill District,
where the playwright grew up and where he has set nearly all his plays.
Jim Becker (Paul Butler) runs this particular jitney service. Its drivers include the
gossipy, meddlesome Turnbo (Stephen McKinley Henderson); the alcoholic ex-tailor Fielding
(Anthony Chisholm); the no-nonsense Doub
(Barry Shabaka Henley); and the ambitious, hardworking Vietnam vet Youngblood (Russell
Hornsby). Three plot lines intertwine: Youngblood shops for a home to surprise his
girlfriend, Rena (Michole Briana White); after 20 years' imprisonment for murder, Becker's
son Clarence ("Booster") (Keith Randolph Smith) tries to reconnect with his
estranged father; and everyone faces imminent dislocation as the city announces plans to
demolish the block for urban renewal.
"Jitney" has many of the qualities that make August Wilson one of America's
leading playwrights. His dialogue has wit, poetry, and wisdom: you always learn something
from an August Wilson play. Many of his characters have interesting and complex, if
sometimes irritating, personalities.
The CenterStage production features a fine cast. Butler brings needed stubbornness to the
difficult role of Becker. Chisholm (as Fielding) and Henderson (as Turnbo) have terrific
timing and delivery. But even veteran
Wilson director Marion McClinton can't coax credible passion from the play's only romantic
couple, Youngblood and Rena. Sound designer Rob Milburn did well with the 1970s music,
less well with car sound effects--too often absent--and the ringing telephone, which when
unanswered sometimes obscured portions of the dialogue.
The script has a variety of faults, notably a clumsy exposition and improbable character
shifts. Moreover, it lacks focus, with underdeveloped or even superfluous characters and a
meandering plot with several red herrings, notably Youngblood's Vietnam service and his
supposed flirtation with Rena's sister. The most poignant relationship, between Becker and
Booster, doesn't even surface until late in act I.
"Jitney" also travels ground Wilson has covered more effectively elsewhere. Like
"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" and "Two Trains Running,"
"Jitney" portrays a cross- section of black America in a gathering place
where troubled characters vent their emotions. Like "Fences," "Jitney"
has a proud father who, in nearly the same language as "Fences," disowns his
son, one of whom (in "Fences" it's the father) has served time for
homicide. Like "Two Trains Running," "Jitney" takes place in a Hill
District business facing urban renewal; one of the characters in "Jitney" (set
in 1977) even mentions the diner demolished in "Two Trains Running"
(set in 1969). Like "Fences," "Two Trains," and "Seven
Guitars," "Jitney" ends with a funeral. From "Two Trains" Wilson
even recycles a key prop--a chalk board, now with drivers' names instead of menu items; a
stock character--a numbers runner who angers management by using the business's only pay
telephone to take bets; and a repeated line of dialogue: "That boy ain't got good
sense."
Perhaps it's unfair to criticize an author's first play for containing elements he treated
more skillfully in later efforts. After all, that's the way it's supposed to work. Seen in
that light, "Jitney" provides an intriguing glimpse of the early development of
a playwright destined to become a leader of his generation.
And maybe, just maybe, Wilson's repetition makes a political point: that the changing
decades of the twentieth century have left things more or less the same for the black man
in America.
An off-stage character in "Two Trains Running" is quoted as saying "If you
drop the ball, you got to go back and pick it up." In revising "Jitney,"
August Wilson picked up the ball. We should applaud his achievement and
look forward to his next play. Let's hope it has more focus, and covers more new ground,
than "Jitney."
www.centerstage.org
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