Queen of the Hill

A city of bones lies at the bottom of the Atlantic -- the remains of the slaves who died while crossing over from Africa.

August Wilson first used this image in his 1986 play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” In a 1993 interview, he called “Joe Turner” his favorite among his plays and said, “The bones rising out of the ocean -- when I wrote that I thought, ‘OK, that’s it, if I die tomorrow I’ll be satisfied and fulfilled as an artist that I wrote that scene.’ ”

Over the last decade, however, Wilson’s satisfaction may have diminished somewhat. For in his new “Gem of the Ocean,” at the Mark Taper Forum, he revives and more fully develops the image of the city of bones -- not as a grim graveyard but as a quasi-heavenly place where African American souls can be washed clean.

The image is the most powerful in a play replete with potent images. But its more literal and extended treatment is not necessarily an improvement. And as in many of Wilson’s recent plays, the vivid language doesn’t always mesh well with an ungainly plot.

The most striking novelty in “Gem of the Ocean,” set in 1904, is that Wilson has finally brought onstage a dominant female character, Aunt Ester. She’s the spiritual advisor and confessor of Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where most of Wilson’s plays are set. Wilson referred to Aunt Ester in “Two Trains Running” (set in 1969, first produced in 1990) and to her death in “King Hedley II” (set in 1985, seen at the Taper in 2000), but this is the first time she has been a tangible presence. It’s Aunt Ester who, in seance-like ceremonies, ushers penitent souls to the city of bones.

Phylicia Rashad’s Ester is quite tangible indeed. The character is supposedly 285 years old here. But this seer is no bedridden relic dispensing dubious pronouncements and surrounded by a mystical haze. When she isn’t working as a medium, she’s surprisingly down to earth. She’s obsessively intrusive in supervising the mundane chores of her heiress apparent, Black Mary, and she enjoys flirtatious repartee with her old friend Solly Two Kings.

Rashad handles all of this with ease. While Ester is a long way from the glamorous role with which Rashad achieved fame on “The Cosby Show,” no effort has been made to depict her as 285. She looks more like someone in her 70s, and her metaphorical age gets little attention.

If Ester is the play’s solid foundation, young Citizen Barlow is the pivotal character, at least in the sense of the one who is most transformed. He has just arrived from the South when he becomes involved in an incident that inadvertently leads to a man’s death. He approaches Ester for help in the remarkably quick and suggestive opening scene. Citizen needs a thorough soul-washing. John Earl Jelks brings an intense edge to his quest.

Yet as the story unfolds, a third character gradually takes center stage: Solly Two Kings, a former slave and Underground Railroad activist who is about to return to the troubled South for one last time to rescue his sister from the increasingly repressive clutches of Jim Crow.

The ragged-voiced Anthony Chisholm’s Solly evokes a tremendous sense of a long-suffering but still high-spirited survivor. Yet Wilson embroils Solly in a melodramatic plot turn, involving a rather implausible offstage event, that diverts him from his urgent and symbolically significant journey down South.

Wilson apparently does so to hammer home the point that the freedom of emancipated ex-slaves in the North wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. But in the play’s current state, Wilson manipulates Solly’s actions into making this point, when the character of Citizen Barlow might have done so with less strain.

The sense that the North is nearly as repressive as the South is embodied in Caesar, a black constable and businessman who has assumed nearly dictatorial powers in the neighborhood. Peter Francis James plays Caesar as a strutting martinet.

He gets to utter a few words in which he tries to justify his actions by appealing to a sense of moving beyond the past, but this feels like a token effort on Wilson’s part. A sudden shift in this character, within two of the play’s climactic scenes, is sloppy storytelling.

Caesar is the brother of Ester’s maid and chosen successor, Black Mary, played with sharp focus by Yvette Ganier, who is given some choice male-bashing lines in exchanges with Citizen. Deep-voiced Al White is strong as Eli, Ester’s longtime supporter and Solly’s longtime friend, but the character recedes into the background. The capable Raynor Scheine repeats a small role he created in “Joe Turner,” as a white peddler who becomes entwined in the neighborhood’s affairs.

The Taper stage has seldom seemed as wide as it does in David Gallo’s set of Ester and Eli’s house, tinged an oceanic blue by Donald Holder’s lights. Holder and sound designer Dan Moses Schreier create some haunting effects in the city of bones scene. But the fact that the episode is then superseded by the attention given to Solly’s struggle makes it feel like a fake climax.

Wilson’s writing is lustrous in most of the individual scenes, and director Marion McClinton’s staging induces plenty of lusty laughter, despite the bleak events. But the skeleton of the play needs bracing before this “Gem” will be able to shine its brightest.

*

“Gem of the Ocean,”

Where: Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Sept. 3, 2:30 p.m.

Ends: Sept. 7 matinee

Price: $31-$45

Contact: (213) 628-2772

Running Time: 3 hours

John Earl Jelks...Citizen Barlow

Phylicia Rashad...Aunt Ester

Anthony Chisholm...Solly Two Kings

Yvette Ganier...Black Mary

Peter Francis James...Caesar

Raynor Scheine...Rutherford Selig

Al White...Eli

By August Wilson. Directed by Marion McClinton. Set by David Gallo. Costumes by Constanza Romero. Lighting by Donald Holder. Sound by Dan Moses Schreier. Music by Kathryn Bostic. Wigs by John Aitchison. Fight director Steve Rankin. Production stage manager Narda Alcorn.