August Wilson’s ten play cycle chronicling a century’s experience of black Americans is one of our nation’s great theatrical accomplishments. THEATREWORKS has produced two of these plays:  Fences, set in the 1950’s, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in the 1920’s. We think Joe Turner may be the greatest play of this great series. 

It’s set (as usual) in Pittsburgh, this time in 1911, in a boarding house which serves a refuge for people on the move, making the great migration north to a new world, a new age of industrialization, and a new identity. The play has an astonishing range, moving forward into the future but also back to a spiritual past, culminating in the juba, a dance which conjures the holy spirit in an ecstatic frenzy. 

At the heart of the play is Harold Loomis, who arrives with his young daughter in search of his missing wife.  His journey is to recover his strength, to stand up, shine and t find “his song.” It is a rare thing to produce a play in Colorado Springs with a large cast of African Americans, and it is rarer still to stage a play of this depth, richness and musicality. 

Joe Turner is perhaps the most ambitious production of our ambitious season, and it’s worth its weight in gold.  It is gold.

-Murray Ross