"TWO TRAINS RUNNING"
On Friday, a freezing cold night, a friend and I caught August Wilson's "Two Trains Running," directed by Lou Bellamy, at the Peter Norton Space on 42nd Street between 10th and 11th in Manhattan. It was a transcending experience.
We had front row seats, a bit closer to stage-right than center. The Peter Norton Space is a small house with a low, wide stage, so the cliche "there's not a bad seat in the house" applies. The action takes place in a dingy Pittsburgh diner in 1969, and set designer Derek McLane took full advantage of the stage's generous width. Just sitting in your seat waiting for the play to begin, you could study the set and marvel at the details ... a battered frying pan, a nasty mop hanging in the back, framed photos of famous black atheletes, a vintage juke box, missing floor tiles, a coffee urn with the red light on, a hint of a street scene. (There were even olfactory touches; at one point in the play, the smell of bacon permeated the theater.)
"Two Trains Running" largely focuses on the hopelessness felt by many African Americans in the late '60s, following the fading promise of the Civil Rights movement and the assassination of two inspirational figures, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (A rally in memory of Malcolm X is a plot point.) Not that this is a preachy piece; this is one of those plays that can have you misty-eyed one second and laughing the next. Wilson's penchant for characterization via dialogue is remarkable. "Two Trains Running" is a long play, but I never wanted it to end.
The cast is glorious. Frankie Faison (known as Barney, the prison guard who treats Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter with humane decency in "Silence of the Lambs," and Burrell, the police commissioner often at the receiving end of bitter political fallout in "The Wire") is Memphis, the owner of the diner who dreams wistfully of selling it to the city at 500 percent profit. January Lavoy is Risa, the waitress whose profoud self-esteem issues have driven her to self-mutilation and mistrust of men. Chad L. Coleman (another "The Wire" cast member) is Sterling, a young buck recently released from prison who tries to score a job and penetrate Risa's invisible wall. Also in the cast are Ron Cephas Jones as a likable numbers hustler, Leon Addison Brown as a mentally disabled man, Arthur French as a sage-like old-timer and Ed Wheeler as an imperious funeral home proprietor.
I'm sorry to report that the final performance of "Two Trains Running" is today. But I hereafter plan to monitor the work of this cast, not to mention Tony-winner Wilson (who died in 2005), and urge you to do the same.
We had front row seats, a bit closer to stage-right than center. The Peter Norton Space is a small house with a low, wide stage, so the cliche "there's not a bad seat in the house" applies. The action takes place in a dingy Pittsburgh diner in 1969, and set designer Derek McLane took full advantage of the stage's generous width. Just sitting in your seat waiting for the play to begin, you could study the set and marvel at the details ... a battered frying pan, a nasty mop hanging in the back, framed photos of famous black atheletes, a vintage juke box, missing floor tiles, a coffee urn with the red light on, a hint of a street scene. (There were even olfactory touches; at one point in the play, the smell of bacon permeated the theater.)
"Two Trains Running" largely focuses on the hopelessness felt by many African Americans in the late '60s, following the fading promise of the Civil Rights movement and the assassination of two inspirational figures, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (A rally in memory of Malcolm X is a plot point.) Not that this is a preachy piece; this is one of those plays that can have you misty-eyed one second and laughing the next. Wilson's penchant for characterization via dialogue is remarkable. "Two Trains Running" is a long play, but I never wanted it to end.
The cast is glorious. Frankie Faison (known as Barney, the prison guard who treats Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter with humane decency in "Silence of the Lambs," and Burrell, the police commissioner often at the receiving end of bitter political fallout in "The Wire") is Memphis, the owner of the diner who dreams wistfully of selling it to the city at 500 percent profit. January Lavoy is Risa, the waitress whose profoud self-esteem issues have driven her to self-mutilation and mistrust of men. Chad L. Coleman (another "The Wire" cast member) is Sterling, a young buck recently released from prison who tries to score a job and penetrate Risa's invisible wall. Also in the cast are Ron Cephas Jones as a likable numbers hustler, Leon Addison Brown as a mentally disabled man, Arthur French as a sage-like old-timer and Ed Wheeler as an imperious funeral home proprietor.
I'm sorry to report that the final performance of "Two Trains Running" is today. But I hereafter plan to monitor the work of this cast, not to mention Tony-winner Wilson (who died in 2005), and urge you to do the same.
posted by Mark Voger at 2:18 PM
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