Theatre in Review: Jitney (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

	Harvy Blanks, Michael Potts, Brandon J. Dirden (kneeling), and André Holland. Photo: Joan Marcus

Because it was written before all the shouting started, there is, I think, a slight tendency to see August Wilson's Jitney as a minor early work. Maybe so, but in Ruben Santiago-Hudson's hands, it has the glittering patina of a masterpiece. By the time Wilson broke through, in 1983, with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Jitney, produced a year earlier at a small theatre in Pennsylvania, was already a little bit forgotten. It didn't make its belated New York debut until Second Stage presented it in 2000. This new production marks its Broadway debut -- and what a gorgeous thing it is!

To be sure, Wilson revised Jitney in the mid-'90s, which helps to explain the assurance with which he turns the everyday conversation of unlicensed car service drivers into such sparkling comedy -- and how deftly he brings each character to life. The early passages consist of a series of comings and goings among the drivers and other local characters; nothing extraordinary happens and yet a world is powerfully evoked, one vivid detail at a time. There's Shealy, the local numbers runner, who, despite his slightly shady profession, has his own cockeyed integrity. When asked how much money was won by one of his customers, he replies, "I don't be putting nobody's business in the street. First thing you know somebody be done got killed talking about 'Shealy said...' I ain't gonna have that on my conscience. I don't know nothing." There's Turnbo, one of the drivers and a professional gossip and pot-stirrer ("I just live and let live"), who reports having driven a customer to visit his grandmother -- and who, finding the old lady not at home, helped himself to her television. Youngblood, the youngest of the drivers, arrives to report that Cigar Annie, a local resident, has been put out of her house, and she's not happy about it: "She started with God and went right on down the list. She cussing out the mayor, Doc Goldblum, Mr. Eli, her landlord, the light man, gas man, telephone man, and anybody else she can think of. They got her furniture and everything else sitting on the sidewalk." He adds, "She standing up in the middle of the street raising up her dress. She had traffic backed up...almost got hit by a milk truck...the cars trying to go around her but she won't let them. Standing there just throwing up her dress."

All of these comments point to a neighborhood in transition, even trauma: Whatever else is going on in Wilson's plays, each is concerned with the fate of the Hill District, Pittsburgh's longtime black neighborhood. Jitney is set in 1977 and, as David Gallo's spectacularly dilapidated set makes clear, the district is on the skids. (In the next play, King Hedley II, the crack epidemic has turned it into a war zone; in the cycle's closer, Radio Golf, the gentrification process has begun.) As the play begins, the city has plans to tear down the entire block, including the building housing Becker's business; he has only two weeks to figure out his next move. Meanwhile, there are personal concerns to sort out: Youngblood's relationship with the beautiful and assertive Rena, the mother of his child, is under terrible stress, thanks to his suddenly furtive behavior. (Turnbo's loose tongue is the source of much of the trouble.) And Becker, the jitney service's owner and authority figure, is facing the unexpected release of his son, Booster, from prison, where he has been doing time for a stupid, brutal crime -- for which he was originally given the death penalty.

These two relationships, both having to do with fathers and their dreams for their sons, give Jitney its solid dramatic foundation. Rena thinks Youngblood is stepping out on her at night with her sister; she isn't wrong, but can't guess at the reasons. Youngblood, a Vietnam vet, is determined that his young boy will have a better life, but his insistence on being the all-providing paternal figure is in direct conflict with Rena's need for an honest, sharing partner. The scene in which they hash out their differences is a shining example of Wilson's knack for creating formidable, three-dimensional female characters. More starkly gripping are the scenes between Becker and Booster; the father can't forgive his son, once a young man of real promise, for throwing his life away -- nor can he forgive Booster for the death of his wife, Booster's mother, who died of grief after Booster was incarcerated. The main father-son confrontation is riveting; a once profoundly loving relationship is reduced to a series of wounding truths and bitter recriminations.

During his lifetime, Wilson enjoyed relationships with a handful of directors -- Lloyd Richards, Kenny Leon, and Marion McClinton, among them -- but Santiago-Hudson, who appeared on Broadway in Wilson's Seven Guitars -- may be the most attuned to the sheer music of the playwright's language. Working with an A team of character actors -- many of them Wilson specialists -- he mines the script for every bit of lyric beauty and dramatic tension. John Douglas Thompson, best known in New York for his classical roles, easily dominates the stage as Becker; he amuses when wrangling his ornery, conflict-prone staff, and he chills one's blood when explaining the reasons behind his ultimate, and irrevocable, withdrawal of love from his son. Brandon J. Dirden matches him, verbal punch for punch, as Booster, who knows he can't take back the past, yet desperately needs a way forward. André Holland, who is having a banner year on film (Moonlight) and television (American Horror Story), is superb as the cocky, hot-headed Youngblood. Michael Potts' Turnbo is the evening's prime source of laughter, with his running caustic commentary, but underneath the comic bluster is something angrier and more furtive, and it bears watching. Carra Patterson, all but unrecognizable from her deadpan comic turn in Joshua Harmon's Significant Other, is a force to be reckoned with as Rena. Anthony Chisholm puts his warmly agreeable, raspy voice and understated comic style to fine use as Fielding, who, thanks to that little pint bottle in his vest pocket, spends most of his workday half in the bag, to Becker's consternation.

In addition, Keith Randolph Smith delights steadily as Doub, another driver who enjoys shutting down Turnbo's nonsense; their Act II debate about the relative charms of Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan provides one of the evening's most delectable passages. Harvy Blanks is innocence itself as he pretends to the fed-up Becker that he isn't using the jitney service's phone for his numbers operation. Ray Anthony Thomas contributes his own distinctive vein of humor as Philmore, the service's star passenger, who is forever mourning his decades-long separation from the wife he loves, but who is always ready to audition another replacement.

Gallo's set, with its torn wallpaper, broken moldings, stained linoleum floors, and large window looking out on the street where cars are parked, finds something elegiacally beautiful in a state of near ruin. Jane Cox's lighting provides marveously detailed time-of-day looks for each scene. Toni-Leslie James' costumes are ideally suited to each character, from Becker's simple dark suits to Youngblood's period-accurate bell bottoms and leather jacket to Shealy's procession of Day-Glo polyester outfits. Darron L. West's sound design provides fine reinforcement for Bill Sims, Jr.'s incidental music, a series of funky jazz themes, featuring guitar and drums; he also creates such necessary sound effects as the offstage blare of car horns.

This production is a powerful reminder of how fluently Wilson transmuted his memories and observations of life in the Hill District into a stunning vision. He never judges his characters; instead, he lets them tell their own stories in language so rich and evocative that it effortlessly achieves the status of poetry. Santiago-Hudson's production gets it all, right up until the devastating final line. Thanks to the fine work of this company, Jitney takes its rightful place as one of the most vivid panels in Wilson's mural of 20th-century black America. -- David Barbour