Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

There is a thunder crack in the middle of August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. In that moment, the hairs on my neck stood up and a chill ran through my body.

You need not believe in god or any form of spiritualism. But there is a sense of the metaphysical that pulses through Wilson’s play and is well-captured by director Debbie Allen’s transportive production.

Originally written in 1988, it is the second chapter in August Wilson’s Century Cycle. Set in 1911, Bertha (Taraji P. Henson) and Seth (Cedric The Entertainer) run a boarding house in Pittsburgh. They host long-term boarder Bynum (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) and newcomer Jeremy (Tripp Taylor).

But new guests arrive with a chill in the air. Wearing a long heavy coat (that is totally out of season) and a wide-brimmed hat that covers his eyes, Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone) strikes an imposing figure which is slightly softened by the small girl clinging to his hand, his daughter Zonia (Savannah Commodore at the performance I saw).

This boardinghouse is a waystation for many. Anyone who walks in the door is searching for something or someone. Set at the time of The Great Migration, twhen many Black peoiple in the South sought to escape the violence around them only to encounter racism and new issues in the North.

Loomis is trying to find his wife, Martha. Bynum searches for a spiritual guide he encountered once before whom he calls Shiny Man. There’s a white peddler Rutherford Selig (Bradley Stryker) who helps Black people search for people they have lost. But as he far-too-casually explains his family’s history as slave owners and slave catchers we are reminded why there is an even a need for such a “finder” to exist at this moment in time.

Heavy on monologues the play feels like dramatic vignettes linked together. A revolving door on love and relationships in the boarding house maybe gets played a little too heavily for laughs. At the same time, maybe those laughs are welcome too. Allen strikes a good balance between the dark and light in the play and letting her very funny cast members let loose at times and reeling it back in when needed.

Bertha and Seth bring a warmth to the room with their own affection for each other (Henson and Cedric are a delight) as well as an understanding for the people who find their way to their home. Even if Seth will gripe and shout from time to time.

But the catalyst for much of the action is Loomis. Boone has the unenviable position of playing a man detached from his own soul. The what and the whys of Loomis’ situation become clear over time.

He strikes people with fear and suspicion. And people are not wrong to worry about him but no one is suffering more than he is. Boone moves like a storm inside his head and is desperate for the storm to pass.  Loomis’ anger, frustration, and pain get all mixed together and Boone teases all of that out in his subtle performance.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Ruben Santiago-Hudson, a long time Wilson interpreter (as an actor and director) is at great ease in this role of Bynum. It’s a quirky character who is part chatterbox and part spiritual advisor. Bynum claims to be able to connect people and draw them back together, but only if they want to be connected. He ambles through this play with a jovial spirit in dark times trying to heal where he can.

Tripp Taylor is making his Broadway debut as Jeremy, a Southern transplant who is eager to get out in the world and get what he deserves. While the character is a charmer with a wandering eye, Taylor brings to the role a sense of a glittering promise with bigger parts in the future. It’s a fun debut.

I was deeply enamored of the set by David Gallo. The boarding house is faithfully represented in the foreground with weathered furniture and an inviting spirit. But the backdrop behind the house shows us a Pittsburgh bridge looming over head and large enough to crush the house and spirits of those struggling under it. There are smoke stacks in the dominating in the distance with rows of other apartment houses in between. Lights come on in those houses from time to time reflecting life happening outside these doors. And Stacey Derosier’s lighting bathes this backdrop like a watercolor painting with purples and blues.

It all just adds up to a moving world fitting Wilson’s poetry.