By the time I’d made it to opening night of the Rep’s Radio Golf last night, I’d already sat in two different theatres for three different shows over the course of the day. I was a bit exhausted. I couldn’t’ve asked for a better show to end the day on. The Rep’s radio Golf is a really well-realized piece of contemporary political drama. It’s a bit strange going to a show at the Rep’s Stiemke Theatre and recognizing more actors in the audience than on the stage . . . the Rep’s cast for the show largely consists of out of town talent.
Radio Golf is the final part in August Wilson’s exhaustive decalogy The Pittsburg Cycle. It’s set just a few years ago . . . in 1997. And though it debuted in 2006, there are some kind of superficial aspects of the story which cast the play in a different light than it would’ve been bathed in just four years ago.
The play concerns Harmond Wilks (Tyrone Mitchell Henderson) a man looking to become the first black Mayor of Pittsburgh. He’s a lawyer who has inherited a real estate firm from his father. He and his business partner Roosevelt Hicks (Howard W. Overshown) are looking to build a high rise apartment complex. In order to do so, they have to tear down a number of houses in a blighted area of town. One man living on the block refuses to relinquish his home.
Talk of running for public office in a town that may not be ready to elect its first black mayor would inevitably involve talk of Obama’s successful presidential run. That conversation feels a bit absent here, almost giving the play a sort of a period feel. And yet, I know full well that one man becoming president doesn’t change much of the socio-political complexity Wilson is exploring in the drama. It’s just strange . . . it feels like we’ve come a long way in the past few years but there’s so much that still has to change . . .
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Roosevelt and Harmond share an office. Above Harmond’s desk is a poster of Martin Luther King Jr. Above Roosevelt’s desk is a poster of Tiger Woods. It's symbolic, but the symbolism has kind of a different hue in 2010 than it did a few year ago. As the title of the play would suggest, there’s some talk of golf here. In one of Roosevelt’s first lines, he’s wondering how much Tiger Woods makes per stroke. The image of a legendary athlete who has made a fortune has a distinct feel to it, but Woods’ marital infidelity has cast a shadow over the man’s successes that cast that particular symbolic aspect of the play in kind of an interesting light . . .
The Rep’s production of Radio Golf runs through March 28th at the Stiemke Theater. A review of the show runs in next week's Shepherd-Express.
