{"id":606897,"date":"2026-04-26T05:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/606897\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T05:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:07:09","slug":"taraji-p-henson-lights-up-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/606897\/","title":{"rendered":"Taraji P. Henson Lights Up Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRare is the Broadway<\/a> season that hasn\u2019t been bettered by an August Wilson<\/a> revival, and this very busy spring is no exception. Joe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone, lovingly and astutely directed by Debbie Allen with a no-weak-link cast headed by Taraji P. Henson<\/a> (in a superb Broadway debut), Cedric The Entertainer<\/a> and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is nothing less than a full-on reminder of Wilson\u2019s singular genius for blending naturalism with more-things-in-heaven-and-earth marvels. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis play, the second chronologically in the author\u2019s incredible 10-play Century Cycle, is set in Pittsburgh yet inhabits the collective memory of Africa, the American South and some ancient, still-felt netherworld. Ryan Coogler\u2019s Sinners couldn\u2019t exist without Wilson\u2019s cartography.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith its exemplary cast that includes an intense Joshua Boone, and a creative team filled with top-of-their-game designers Paul Tazewell (costumes), David Gallo (sets), Stacey Derosier (lighting) and Justin Ellington (sound), Joe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone is an unfailing glimpse into that phenomenon described by William Falkner as the past never being dead, never even being past. Ghosts \u2013 or haints or \u201cshiny men\u201d or \u201cbones people\u201d \u2013 are forever felt, if not ever-present.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u201ctoday\u201d of Joe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone is 1911, an era when Wilson\u2019s Pittsburgh was growing with the steady arrivals of Southern Black migrants \u2013 some formerly enslaved, some young enough to have never been forced to pick cotton (though no one, young or old, can shed its cruel legacy). One character \u2013 a troubled traveling man named Herald Loomis (Boone) \u2013 remains in the torturous mental chains of a post-slavery enslavement: He was abducted and forced into seven years of hard labor by the based-on-history man who gives this play its title.<\/p>\n

\n\tLoomis, given to speaking in tongues and suffering harrowing apocalyptic visions, arrives with his 12-year-old daughter Zonia (Savannah Commodore at the reviewed performance) at the boarding house of Seth and Bertha Holly (Cedric the Entertainer and Henson). There, he joins the just-passing-through community of Jeremy Furlow (Tripp Taylor), a callow guitar-playing young man newly arrived from the South; Mattie Campbell (Nimene Sierra Wureh), a dejected, lovesick young woman who has taken up with Jeremy to get over a recent heartbreak; and Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd), a fancy-dressed young woman disillusioned with love and now just looking for the next good time (which might be the naive Jeremy).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then there\u2019s Bynum Walker (a stand-out Santiago-Hudson), an aging \u201cconjure man\u201d who claims to have met a supernatural \u201cshiny man\u201d who gave him the secret of life and instilled a gift for binding people to other people, rescuing the \u201cbinded\u201d from the loneliness that haunts people like Jeremy, Mattie, Molly and, most of all, the tormented Herald and his motherless daughter.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJoshua Boone, Ruben Santiago-Hudson<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is through Bynum \u2013 a nickname reflecting the power to \u201cbind them\u201d \u2013 that the play derives much of its aura of the otherworldly, or at least the mysterious worldly, what Seth disdainfully dismisses as outdated \u201cheebie-jeebie\u201d stuff. Rituals involving the blood of dead pigeons, incantations and circles drawn in the dirt \u2013 all conducted off-stage \u2013 might be little more than holdovers from deep country roots, but it\u2019s only Bynum who can bring the \u201cpossessed\u201d Herald (note the name and the spelling) out of his violent, terrifying spells.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou shining like new money,\u201d Bynum is given to say when he senses the sort of spiritual breakthrough that gave his own once-misspent life a newfound purpose.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe household is visited weekly by traveling salesman Rutherford Selig (Bradley Stryker), the play\u2019s sole white character who does business with the pots-and-pans-making Seth. More importantly, Selig is what Bynam calls a \u201cPeople Finder\u201d: For a fee, Selig will keep an eye out while on his sales routes for whatever missing person the payer seeks. Bynam wants to reunite with his \u201cShiny Man,\u201d while the somber, black-clad Herald wants only to find the wife he believes abandoned him during his forced servitude to Joe Turner.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeth is pretty sure he knows who and where the missing wife is, but he\u2019s not inclined to share the information with the \u201cmean\u201d-looking Herald for fear of what the dangerous man might do. <\/p>\n

\n\tIt doesn\u2019t spoil the play\u2019s stunning ending to note that the missing wife, Martha (Abigail Onwunali), does indeed turn up, though she certainly isn\u2019t the cheating betrayer that has kept the obsessed Herald searching for years. There\u2019s a chance Bynum will have yet another opportunity to work his magic.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe cast of \u2018Joe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJulieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the things Wilson seems to be getting at here is an exploration of migration and the tolls it carries. The rewards \u2013 newfound identities, left-behind burdens and, always, the hope for something better \u2013 is chained to the costs. No one, young or old, the playwright suggests, is ever entirely free, neither of the past or of themselves. <\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Allen paces the reveals and developments \u2013 whether noxious or as sweet as the first blush of love in little Zonia and neighbor boy Reuben (Jackson Edward Davis at the review performance) \u2013 with an artful sense of the narrative\u2019s timings and rhythms.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the threat of violence erupts, as we sense all along it will, it comes not only as physical violation but spiritual, an assault on the peace and stability that Seth, Bertha and their thrown-together family have worked so hard to maintain. It is a credit to Wilson\u2019s monumental talent, and the astuteness of this production, that we\u2019re left at the end with the sense of a past that won\u2019t fade and a future that might never know what to make of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: Joe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone
Venue: Broadway\u2019s Ethel Barrymore Theater
Written By: August Wilson
Directed By: Debbie Allen
Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Cedric The Entertainer, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Joshua Boone, Maya Boyd, Savannah Commodore\/Dominique Skye Turner, Abigail Onwunali, Bradley Stryker, Tripp Taylor, Christopher Woodley\/Jackson Edward Davis, Nimene Sierra Wureh
Running Time: 2 Hrs 20 Min (including intermission)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rare is the Broadway season that hasn\u2019t been bettered by an August Wilson revival, and this very busy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[57089,21540,110469,96343,236,88,263773,31872],"class_list":{"0":"post-606897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-august-wilson","9":"tag-broadway","10":"tag-broadway-review","11":"tag-cedric-the-entertainer","12":"tag-celebrities","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-joe-turners-come-and-gone","15":"tag-taraji-p-henson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}