The celebrated playwright’s potent tale of African-Americans chasing the elusive American dream raises important questions –– and unlocks the secrets of a people’s past

By David Feldman
http://cnycafemomus.com/David_Feldman.html

Radio Golf may be an odd-sounding title for the last of August Wilson’s 10-play cycle about African-Americans in the 20th-century, especially when you consider some of his other titles –– like Gem of the Ocean or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

The title may sound weak, and the play is not Wilson’s strongest. There’s at least one very thin role, and the plot’s forward motion occasionally stumbles, goes in wayward directions or permits characters to indulge in discursive monologues.  But two of those characters are absolutely delightful, as are the tales they spin.  And Syracuse Stage’s current production, wonderfully acted and vigorously mounted under the compassionate and perceptive direction of Timothy Bond, is in some ways stronger than the script.

That title of the play does not refer to the play’s protagonist, Harmond Wilks (Law and Order star Richard Brooks, in a performance that seems almost lackadaisical and passive early on but which gains intensity as the action progresses).  Wilks’s character is a successful real estate developer contemplating a run to become Pittsburgh’s first African-American mayor. Rather, the title refers to Wilks’s partner –– the large-mannered and deceptively easygoing Roosevelt Hicks (played with controlled exuberance, and a kind of tasteful flashiness, by G. Valmont Thomas).

Upstage of Wilks’s desk is a large photo of Martin Luther King.  Across the stage is Hicks’ side of the office, with a photo of Tiger Woods.  William Bloodgood’s set visually clues us in to the differences between the two partners.  Golf and social mobility are Hicks’s preoccupations, while the Cornell-educated Wilks tries to live up to King's ideals as he pursues the career path set out for him by his (real estate developer) father. But a twist centered on a secret from the past will ultimately set Wilks in a very different direction.

Soon after the play opens, Hicks is offered part-ownership in a radio station by a wealthy, white golf club buddy who knows the FCC will approve his proposal to buy the station at a devalued price if one of the principals involved is African-American.  And there in a nutshell is the play’s central theme.  Late in the 20th-century there are African-Americans who have benefitted from the integration struggles and from special programs for minorities.  Yet along with such success in the white culture comes some unpleasant temptations. Hicks enthusiastically succumbs to these temptations and becomes just another American (neither black nor white) willing to abandon principle and even personal dignity in the headlong pursuit of wealth. Would-be mayor Wilks is tempted to go in the same direction as Hicks, but ultimately chooses a surprising path.  

The plot centers on the conflict between these two partners, complicated by the fact that there’s a historical glitch concerning the property the partners want to develop in Pittsburgh’s blighted Hill District.  They’re poised to be come rich, and they know full well that this opportunity would never have arisen without the funding opportunities available to them as minorities.  The glitch is that the owner of a house that stands in the way of the development will not sell.  Or is he the owner? To whom does the house actually belong?  And how is the would-be mayor Wilks's own past connected to that house?

This isn’t just any old house –– it has a past, with a secret history that includes characters from other Wilson plays who have lived there.  Call it, if you will, a symbolic representation of the history and soul of the African-American race.  And as the 20th-century starts to turn on its hinge approaching the 21st-century, we find ourselves at the culminating thematic point of Wilson’s cycle: Will African-Americans move on to become merely black counterparts of the successful, money-oriented white American culture?  Or will they be able to find ways to move into the future without forsaking their past?

Crystal Fox does good enough work as Wilks’s wife, Mame, but it’s a throwaway role that’s never fully developed in the script.  And neither she nor Brooks generates much real warmth in the few intimate scenes the script allows them.

And while Mame, Wilks and Hicks are the central characters in Radio Golf, this production brings us two performers (in what seem like peripheral roles) who simply steal the show.

As Sterling, the so-clever-people-think-he’s-dumb former bank robber and current contractor, LeLand Gantt is a delight –– fumbling with his hat, going on about painting the house, and suddenly, with a simple can of paint, turning the plot 180-degrees.  

Then there’s the brilliant performance of Thomas Jefferson Byrd, as Elder Joseph Barlow. He is a representative of the past and the protector of the house that stands in the way of the development.  Byrd’s manner is slightly insane, brilliantly wise and deftly funny.  And this Tony-nominated (for May Rainey) actor possesses two of the most expressive hands you’ll see on any American stage.  His performance alone is worth the price of admission. 

William Bloodgood’s set combines realism and expressionism with its commonplace office interior and windows at the back of the stage telegraphing each entrance of the next eccentric character.  It also provides tantalizing glimpses of the doorway to the mysterious house –– which occasionally appears to loom ghostlike beyond the office and sidewalk outside.  It is the door, of course, to both a real house and a symbolic place wherein are hidden the mysteries and secrets of a people’s past.

Somebody who didn’t see the production told me he’d heard it was a "depressing show."  Not at all.  This is not only Syracuse Stage at its finest, but Radio Golf, while serious, is also compelling.  It has some of the funniest lines and most delightful characters in American theater, and you will leave this profound drama and its surprising final moments with renewed respect for its author –– one of the great voices of the American theater.  

DETAILS BOX:
What: Radio Golf by August Wilson, performed by Syracuse Stage
Where: Archbold Theatre, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse
When: Through March 13
Length of Performance: 2 hours 35 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission
Tickets: Adults, $16 to $48; 40 and under, $25; 18 and under $16; student rush, $15; call 315-443-3275, or online at www.SyracuseStage.org 
Family guide: Recommended for audiences of all ages