August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone follow the same formula. Things are kind of weird and most characters in the play are trying to pretend like everything is normal as they go on with their lives despite the clear line of trauma underneath. But there’s a moment where the strange gets dialed up so far, they can’t ignore it.
In the Detroit Repertory Theatre’s production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Will Bryson smashes this glass of illusion, delving us into the pits of strangeness so perfectly that, even if you’re familiar with the play, you almost don’t see it coming.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is the second of ten plays in Wilson’s American Century Cycle, which follows the experiences of African Americans through each decade in the 20th century. It takes place in a boarding house full of peculiar characters in 1911 Pittsburgh.
The play opened at the Detroit Rep on January 12 and closes March 3 as part of the theater’s 67th season.
In Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Bryson plays Harold Loomis, a mysterious traveler who’s come to the guesthouse with his daughter, searching for his long-lost wife. Bryson is a force to behold. His foreboding presence enters the room without the need to speak as he stomps across the stage.
Bryson also played Lincoln in the first play of the season, Topdog/Underdog. You know you’re watching a good actor when they’ve tricked you into believing they actually are the character they’re playing and you get the false sense that you know their true personality. But then you see them play a completely different character and they’ve somehow convinced you again that you know the real them this time.
The Rep also put on the Michigan professional premiere of Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean during season 66 in 2023. Both plays have a curious spirit worker, using some sort of hoodoo or ancestral tradition to help the characters remember that their belief in themselves is the real magic.
In Joe Turner we meet Bynum, a root worker with the power to “bind” people together, played by Lynch Travis, who also directs the play. He is the anchor for all the other characters as he watches their evolution with a silent knowing that can only come from the spirit realm.
Unlike in Gem of the Ocean, however, where we saw Black Mary’s arc from a quiet apprentice to finally standing up for herself, in Joe Turner, we get Mattie’s (played by Tayler Jones) persistent longing for male attention.
It feels like an unfortunate message to women — to wait for a man to inject meaning into your life, and to give yourself so easily to whoever happens to appear, even when he’s a bit psychopathic.
Still, part of the magic of live theater is that you never really know what’s going to happen. The lines are the same night to night, but maybe they’re delivered with a slight change in intonation tonight. Maybe the audience doesn’t find a joke funny or, as in my case, the crowd is full of rowdy Northwestern High School alumni whose rambunctious laughter is so loud, that it drowns out the next lines after the joke has passed.
This review won’t contain any spoilers, but even if it did, the actors will have you so entranced that you’ll forget what you’ve read about the play anyway. But by the end, you’ll remember that each one of us has a song inside waiting to be unearthed and even the most damaged among us can shine.
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