“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” part of August Wilson’s cycle of 10 plays recounting the African American experience in the 20th century, has one foot in the world of nickels and dimes: how much boardinghouse owner Seth (Reginald Wilkins) charges guests, how much he makes turning scrap metal into dustbins.
But the play, now in a Lower Bottom Playaz production at the recently rechristenedBAM House, has another foot in the supernatural. One character, Bynum (Pierre Scott), “seems to be lost in a world of his own making and to swallow any adversity or interference with this grand design.” Another, the guitar-playing Jeremy (Stanley Hunt), has a spirit that’s “yet to be molded into song.”
The show, directed by Ayodele Nzinga, is driven partly by the arrival of new boarder Herald Loomis (Koran Streets) and his search for his wife, who mysteriously disappeared. But the show is also about what it means for a Black man in 1911 Pittsburgh to find and trumpet his own song.