Gem of the Ocean

Synopsis

Set in 1904, Gem of the Ocean begins on the eve of the 287th birthday of Aunt Ester (a recurring character in Wilson's play cycle). Citizen Barlow, a man who is in spiritual turmoil, arrives at Aunt Ester's house in Pittsburgh's Hill District and is soon set off on a spiritual journey to find the mythic City of Bones, leading him to startling discoveries and setting him on a course of duty and redemption.

Our Review:

11 January 2006

In the waist-coat pocket of the elegantly dressed but crushingly poor Solly Two Kings, where most men would keep a watch, Solly has a short, thick length of chain that once kept him enslaved. Nothing informs August Wilson’s play, or the dramatist’s entire cycle – one play for each 20th-century decade - more emphatically than that piece of chain.

All playwrights stake out their territory. But few dramatic landscapes are as well defined as that of Wilson, whose work chronicles the African-American experience. As does the Tricycle’s season of African-American plays, which started with a revival of Abram Hill’s underwhelming Walk Hard but which receives a powerful boost with the penultimate play in Wilson’s epic project.

As with most of the works in Wilson’s cycle, Gem of the Ocean is set in the Pittsburgh slum Hill district of the writer’s youth. Setting his drama in 1904 makes this play his chronologically closest to slavery....

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