A TREASURE WITH MANY MEANINGS
'Gem' reflects black experience
Actor's Theatre tackles first chapter in 10-part cycle by August Wilson
JULIE YORK COPPENS
Theater Writer
A boat. A treasure. A passage through time. A bill of sale.
"It's a whole lot of things," actor Karen Abercrombie says, reflecting on "Gem of the Ocean," the symbolic title of August Wilson's drama now at Actor's Theatre of Charlotte.
Though written near the end of Wilson's extraordinary career -- the playwright died in 2005 -- "Gem," set in 1904 Pittsburgh, represents the first chapter in his 10-play, decade-by-decade dramatization of the African American experience. Like the "Gem" itself, this play has many facets, reflecting back to slavery, Civil War and Reconstruction, and casting forward to industrialization, urbanization and the struggle for civil rights. It's a serious work, but with surprising humor. Much of it unspools in a leisurely way, as the characters tell stories that sound simple but whose meanings run fathoms deep.
Abercrombie plays Aunt Ester, one of the best storytellers in Wilson's entire Pittsburgh Cycle. A feisty 285 years old at the time of "Gem," Aunt Ester knows her history. She knows her Bible. She knows the proper way to make a bed or cook a pot of beans, as her young housekeeper and protégé, Black Mary, hears -- to her own daily aggravation.
At the heart of Aunt Ester's Hill District house, a former stop on the Underground Railroad, is the Gem of the Ocean, a relic whose true nature is revealed late in the play. But not everyone who sees the treasure recognizes its value. One who does is Citizen Barlow, a young farmer who's tried to find work at the nearby mill. When that turns out badly, Citizen comes to Aunt Ester for guidance, redemption and a square meal.
"He's looking for something that completes him," says actor Jeremy DeCarlos, cast as Citizen. "I believe he hasn't met anyone like Aunt Ester before. There's sort of an aura that surrounds her, that he notices right away. There's a teacher-student reverence that happens."
The education, though, goes both ways.
"I need him as much or even more than he needs me," says Abercrombie, who has several lines as Aunt Ester in which the woman she compares Citizen to Junebug, one of her lost sons. The actor adds, answering one of the drama's early mysteries about Citizen's access to Aunt Ester's well-guarded sanctuary: "I leave that window open for him, you know."
In fact, as we gradually discover in Wilson's script, Citizen has something to offer everyone in Aunt Ester's circle. Even the sour, spirited Black Mary.
Visiting director John Rogers Harris, of UNC Chapel Hill, has found the relationships in "Gem of the Ocean" as intriguing as Wilson's larger themes.
"I'm not seeing it as a `race play' in the binary sense," Harris says, suggesting that Wilson's own background -- biracial, often turbulent -- gave the author a nuanced view. While "Gem" speaks of lynchings and other crimes inflicted on African Americans by whites, the main conflict rises from within the black community, Harris says: "It's about, how do you get to be an American?"
"Everybody's welcome, but black folks -- especially come, because this might be a meal you're familiar with," Harris says. "Come as you are, and enjoy."
Abercrombie hopes to send her audience away with "something new," she says, whether it's a thought or a feeling or just a story, well told: "Something that will last -- whatever that is." PREVIEW
Gem of the Ocean
African Americans wrestle with freedom in the first chapter of August Wilson's 10-play saga, set in 1904 Pittsburgh.
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. next Sunday. Runs through March 1. Some shows sold out.
WHERE: Actor's Theatre of Charlotte, 650 E. Stonewall St. ADMISSION:
$23-$28; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 is pay-what-you-can.
DETAILS: 704-342-2251; or www.actorstheatrecharlotte.org.
