Broadway Critics Hail Wilson’s ‘Joe Turner’

“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” has come and gone at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, but it’s new to Broadway, where the critics have hailed it as August Wilson’s best play yet.

This is the third section of a dramatic mural that Wilson is building about black life in the 20th Century. (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Fences” were the first two.) Set in a Pittsburgh boardinghouse in 1911, it concerns a haunted man’s search for the wife who left him after he was trapped by a bounty hunter.

Frank Rich of the New York Times thought it might be Wilson’s “most profound and theatrically adventurous” play, even though, as usual, a somewhat overwritten one. “There are occasions of true mystery and high drama, and they take Mr. Wilson’s characters to a dizzying place they haven’t been before.”

Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press called it “Wilson’s most ambitious play.” Like Rich, he was particularly taken with its mixture of African mysticism and naturalistic drama--as in the scene where the boarders break into a Saturday-night juba dance. And he liked the way Wilson had particularized the minor characters’ lives, even more so than in ‘Ma Rainey’ and ‘Fences.”

Variety’s Richard Hummler: “What’s remarkable about Wilson’s work is its healing spirit and sense of affirmation. While the victimized protagonist is struggling to regain a foothold on life, the other characters are moving forward despite the shackles imposed on them by a white culture.”

Hummler also praised Lloyd Richards’ “on-pitch” staging and Delroy Lindo’s “unforgettable” central performance. A dissenter was Howard Kissell of the New York Daily News. He found some powerful scenes, but felt that Wilson had “minimized the conflict the characters and the period require.”

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE. Caryl Churchill’s “Serious Money” has won this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn prize for the best play in the English and American theater by a woman. The prize money is quite serious--$5,000.

Is it sexist to have a special award for female playwrights? Maybe. But in 1983, of the 620 plays performed in British repertory theaters, only 42 were written by women. And 22 of those 42 were by Agatha Christie.

DIAL DIRECT. Readers wondering what’s playing in New York no longer have to call Calendar. They can get a complete free rundown by dialing 1-800-STAGE-NY. Sponsored by Theatre Development Fund and American Express, this hot line has logged 100,000 calls since it opened a year ago. Now somebody should devise a STAGE-LA line.

IN QUOTES. Oscar Wilde, in Richard Ellman’s new biography--”The essence of good dialogue is interruption.”