COURTESY WIKIPEDIA
THE STUDIO THEATRE
(click the title for tix)
May 20 – June 28, 2009
Radio Golf
by August Wilson
directed by Ron Himesstarring
Bianca loves the multi-layered works of the late August Wilson, and can’t wait to see the 10th installment of his Pittsburgh based cycle. (1 play each, based in 10 decades of the African Amercian experience) especially because he doesn’t coon it up by putting a man in a dress and wig, in order to provide the audience withe a moving and thought provoking theatrical experience. (WEEKLY STINK EYE TO ‘THE PERRY’)
Gotta love that Wiki, Play synopsis:
Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated lawyer with an educated and ambitious wife, wants to redevelop the “blighted” area of the
Hill District in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Having inherited a prosperous real estate firm from his father and grandfather, Wilks is about to declare his candidacy to be Pittsburgh’s first black mayor. Meanwhile, he and his friend Roosevelt Hicks are engineering a development deal on Wylie Avenue to build a
high-rise apartment building with a ground floor filled with high-end chain stores like
Starbucks,
Whole Foods, and
Barnes & Noble.
The deal depends on federal money, which requires a finding that the area is blighted. There are offstage city politics and backroom deals. Harmond and Roosevelt, a newly-minted
Mellon Bank vice president, think they are equal competitors in capitalism’s public-private arena, but they may just be black front men for white money.
Suddenly another world intrudes when an old mansion at 1839 Wylie they have slated for demolition turns out to have a significant past. It was the home of Aunt Ester, the hereditary folk priestess whose tale goes back to 1619, when the first shipload of African slaves was brought to Virginia.