Congratulations for that best-play Tony nomination! Bummer that this last of the late August Wilson’s 10 phenomenal plays about Blacks in the 20th century IS CLOSING after only 81 performances.
Are you feeling guilty? Good. Try to see it by July 1st at the Cort Theater in Manhattan. A friend of mine took a group of 80 to see it , and they had a wonderful time before the play socializing, during the play taking it all in and after the play debating its message.
This is an excerpt from a New York Times review by Ben Brantley in May:
"As Mr. Wilson portrays them, the 1990s are an arid, soul-sapping time for the black man. This is because his characters at last have the chance to enter the white man's kingdom of money, stocks and bonds and real estate and takeovers and, oh yes, the moneymaker's favorite pastime, golf. A poster of Tiger Woods figures in 'Radio Golf,' and it says much about the play's priorities that tearing it down becomes a small moral victory.
'''Radio Golf' centers on the Faustian figure of Harmond Wilks (Harry Lennix), a real estate developer poised to run for mayor of Pittsburgh. Harmond's wife, Mame (Tonya Pinkins), is in line to be head of the public relations office of the governor of Pennsylvania. And Harmond and his longtime friend Roosevelt Hicks (James A. Williams) are on the verge of clinching a big redevelopment deal to revitalize the Hill, erasing its history in the process.
'''This is the big time,' Roosevelt says to Harmond, 'nothing but blue skies.'
"But there's a blot on those skies in the form of a house that must be torn down to make way for a new shopping and apartment complex (which will include Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, of course). The address of that house is 1839 Wiley. And if you know your August Wilson, you know this was the address of the ancient Aunt Ester, the former slave who lived for centuries on the Hill as the embodiment of a past that must never be forgotten."
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