Gem of the Ocean

No one except perhaps Eugene ONeill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater.John Lahr, The New Yorker A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilsons career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.Ben Brantley, The New York Times Wilsons juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune Gem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilsons decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th centuryan unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prizewinning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the dramas 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther. Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.