On Stage: There may be changes ahead, but let's look at how others are responding to 'King Hedley II'

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On Stage: There may be changes ahead, but let's look at how others are responding to 'King Hedley II'

Friday, December 24, 1999

By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic

The game isn't over yet. Indeed, August Wilson's "King Hedley II" will be revised in the months to come and then re-produced for years. But it's still time to post an early critical scorecard.

Special Report
An August heritage

I know of 10 reviews so far -- six local, one regional, three national. There will be more. No, the New York Times hasn't been here yet. Its No. 2 theater critic (Peter Marks) recently changed jobs and hasn't yet been replaced, while No. 1 (Ben Brantley) has been busy with New York openings. But Brantley will come.

Here's how it stands to date:

Very positive: David Patrick Stearns, USA Today; Chris Rawson, PG; Chris Jones, Variety.

Positive: Michael Kuchwara, AP; Alice Carter, Tribune-Review; Ted Hoover, City Paper; Mary Alice Meli, New Castle News.

Mixed: David Sallinger, McKeesport Daily News.

Negative: Tony Brown, Cleveland Plain Dealer; Anna Rosenstein, In Pittsburgh.

Others might categorize the reviews differently, of course, including the authors, but this is my take. Note that I don't categorize them as "raves" or "pans," since that language of press agentry is awfully reductive.

But any such scorecard is by nature reductive. For one thing, it focuses on the reviews' evaluations, which are really less important than intelligent description and analysis. Fortunately, in this day of the Web, you can still read most of the reviews yourself. For mine, go to the PG's very readable Web site at www.post-gazette.com. Our homepage includes special connections to the review and to index pages for both our O'Reilly Theater and August Wilson coverage. Indeed, our August Wilson page goes back now to 1997 and we're adding more material back at least to 1993, making the point that no paper in America has covered his work more fully.

I'm not going to extend this exercise in collegial respect to the point of giving you the Web addresses of all the other reviews I've listed, but you'll probably find some embedded in this article when it gets on the Web.

Let me add something about reading reviews.

Clive Barnes once said that a drama critic should be someone who finds more of interest in a bad play than the average theater-goer finds in a good one. Think of that while reading reviews and evaluating the critic.

And consider also that every review is in some sense autobiographical. Not just when it's one of those wayward reviews that talks more about the critic than the play -- that's stupid or indulgent -- but even when the review tends to business. The critic necessarily writes out of his or her experience, knowledge and taste, so he or she can discover in the work only what he or she is prepared or able to discover.

Keep that in mind, too.

I may never have made it clear that the honor of having a professional world premiere of an August Wilson play would have its downside. It's more than compensated for by the upside, of course, but it ought to be acknowledged: No Wilson play is as good in its first production as it will be later, after he's further refined it.

That's the downside. My clearest memory of what that means is with "Two Trains Running," which I saw in its first professional staging at Yale Rep. (It featured the very fine Ella Joyce, by the way, now playing Tonya in "King Hedley.") As I said then in my review, it was a rich experience, but I couldn't really find its center. The next time I saw it, Wilson had trimmed and added bits here and there -- no major changes, really -- and suddenly it fell into place.

Seeing a Wilson play later in its life, you also have the advantage of all the commentary -- you know something about what you're going to see. Seeing it cold, as we have here, we have to figure it out for ourselves. I count that as an advantage, but not everyone agrees.

David Patrick Stearns smartly pointed out in USA Today that "King Hedley" is further along at this stage than other Wilson plays have been in their professional premieres. Doubtless Wilson's own developing dramaturgy is the main reason -- and there was the workshop period in Seattle (see below). But most negative responses have been along exactly these lines, impatient with the play's length (it's now 31/2 hours, including intermission) and unable to find the relevance of some of the play's many long monologues.

I felt some of the latter problem when I first saw the play, but on second viewing, those big speeches felt better integrated into the flow. I also began to hear more of their thematic complexity and melody. If you have a chance to see "Hedley" twice, I'll bet you understand it better the second time.

Some may find that a flaw, but I don't recall anyone condemning "King Lear" because they couldn't get it all on first hearing. And that one's a lot longer than 31/2 hours. Let's consider ourselves lucky in seeing "King Hedley" before Wilson trims it. In fact, you could make a great (long!) concert reading out of outtakes from his plays.

Odds and ends:

When he does revise, it seems to me there's a time error Wilson will want to correct. King tells us he killed Pernell in 1978 and we know King then served seven years in the pen. But the play takes place in 1985. Surely that doesn't leave enough time for King to have met and married Tonya? It's clear that they didn't just get married, and there's no sense that King recently left prison. The time scheme needs another year or two to make sense.

One of my favorite moments in Marion McClinton's production is when King (the powerful Tony Todd) uses the audience in the side balcony as though they were the jury. It's risky -- breaking the naturalistic illusion -- but I think it works and turns the O'Reilly intimacy to great advantage.

A few of the many issues I'll ponder when I see the play again: Mirrors. (They're referred to a lot and there's one on the porch.) Cats. (Not just Aunt Ester's that's treated with such ritual respect, but that gang of five cats that beat up a German shepherd.) Debts, receipts, keeping accounts. ("Legal tender for all debts, public and private," reads King from the currency -- an interesting idea.)

The two-week Seattle workshop last summer, which gave Wilson his first chance to see what he'd written up and on its feet, included Danny Glover as Elmore and Laurence Fishburne as King. Possibly they'd be available if "King Hedley" goes to Broadway -- appearing in an August Wilson play is pretty high status these days.

Cancelling performances Sunday and Tuesday because of Marlene Warfield's illness cost the Public money. You know they don't want to do it. So why don't they have understudies?

"Because of the pressure under which we put these things together," Eddie Gilbert said when I asked. There's simply no time to rehearse a second cast, and with only six characters, "Hedley" doesn't have actors playing small roles who could easily understudy the leads. Gilbert points out that some larger regional theaters with bigger companies do use understudies, but even they don't start to rehearse them until the play is up and running -- so that wouldn't have helped in this case.

He didn't say it, but there's also the expense. Broadway productions are on a different planet financially. "Hedley" would need four understudies -- hiring them for the run of the show, rehearsals included, would be prohibitive. And the drop-off in talent would be considerable.

Gilbert also told me the flu had raced through the entire cast and most of the staff, as well. He figures everyone was especially vulnerable because they were so tired with the push toward opening of both play and theater. But they may add another performance in the final week.