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The Century Cycle #7
Two Trains Running
August Wilson surged to the forefront of American playwrights with the success of such critically acclaimed plays as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Joe Turner's Come and Gone, as well as his Pulitzer Prize winners Fences and The Piano Lesson. Now, with Two Trains Running, which Time magazine hailed as "his most mature work to date, " he offers another mesmerizing chapter in his remarkable cycle of plays about the black experience in twentieth-century America.
It is Pittsburgh, 1969. The regulars of Memphis Lee's restaurant are struggling to cope with the turbulence of a world that is changing rapidly around them and fighting back when they can. As the play unfolds, Memphis's diner - and the rest of his block - is scheduled to be torn down, a casualty of the city's renovation project that is sweeping away the buildings of a community, but not its spirit. The rich undertaker across the street encourages Memphis to accept his offer to buy the place from him at a reduced price, but Memphis stands his ground, determined to make the city pay him what the property is worth, refusing to be swindled out of his land as he was years before in Mississippi.
Into this fray come Sterling, the ex-con who embraces the tenets of Malcolm X; Wolf, the bookie who has learned to play by the white man's rules; Risa, a waitress of quiet dignity who has mutilated her legs to distance herself from men; and Holloway, the resident philosopher and fervent believer in the prophecies of a legendary 322-year-old woman down the street, a reminder of their struggle and heritage. And just as sure as an inexorable future looms right around the corner, these people of "loud voices and big hearts" continue to search, to falter, to hope that they can catch the train that will make the difference.
With compassion, humor, and a superb sense of place and time, Wilson paints a vivid portrait of everyday lives in the shadow of great events, and of unsung men and women who are anything but ordinary.
It is Pittsburgh, 1969. The regulars of Memphis Lee's restaurant are struggling to cope with the turbulence of a world that is changing rapidly around them and fighting back when they can. As the play unfolds, Memphis's diner - and the rest of his block - is scheduled to be torn down, a casualty of the city's renovation project that is sweeping away the buildings of a community, but not its spirit. The rich undertaker across the street encourages Memphis to accept his offer to buy the place from him at a reduced price, but Memphis stands his ground, determined to make the city pay him what the property is worth, refusing to be swindled out of his land as he was years before in Mississippi.
Into this fray come Sterling, the ex-con who embraces the tenets of Malcolm X; Wolf, the bookie who has learned to play by the white man's rules; Risa, a waitress of quiet dignity who has mutilated her legs to distance herself from men; and Holloway, the resident philosopher and fervent believer in the prophecies of a legendary 322-year-old woman down the street, a reminder of their struggle and heritage. And just as sure as an inexorable future looms right around the corner, these people of "loud voices and big hearts" continue to search, to falter, to hope that they can catch the train that will make the difference.
With compassion, humor, and a superb sense of place and time, Wilson paints a vivid portrait of everyday lives in the shadow of great events, and of unsung men and women who are anything but ordinary.
110 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
August Wilson
44 books528 followersAmerican playwright August Wilson won a Pulitzer Prize for
Fences
in 1985 and for
The Piano Lesson
in 1987.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
His literary legacy embraces the ten series and received twice for drama for The Pittsburgh Cycle . Each depicted the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience, set in different decade of the 20th century.
Daisy Wilson, an African American cleaning woman from North Carolina, in the hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, bore Frederick August Kittel, Junior, the fourth of six children, to Frederick August Kittel, Senior, a German immigrant baker. From North Carolina, maternal grandmother of Wilson earlier sought a better life and walked to Pennsylvania. After his fifth year, his mother raised the children alone in a two-room apartment above a grocery store at 1727 Bedford Avenue.
After death of Frederick August Kittel, Senior, in 1965, his son changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother.
In 1968, Wilson co-founded the black horizon theater in the hill district of Pittsburgh alongside Rob Penny, his friend. People first performed his Recycling for audiences in small theaters and public housing community centers. Among these early efforts, he revised Jitney more than two decades later as part of his ten-cycle on 20th-century Pittsburgh.
Wilson married three times. His first marriage to Brenda Burton lasted from 1969 to 1972. She bore him Sakina Ansari, a daughter, in 1970.
Vernell Lillie founded of the Kuntu repertory theatre at the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 and, two years later, directed The Homecoming of Wilson in 1976.
Wilson also co-founded the workshop of Kuntu to bring African-Americans together and to assist them in publication and production. Both organizations still act.
Claude Purdy, friend and director, suggested to Wilson to move to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1978 and helped him secure a job with educational scripts for the science museum. In 1980, he received a fellowship for the center in Minneapolis. Wilson long associated with the penumbra theatre company, which gave the premieres, of Saint Paul.
In 1981, he married to Judy Oliver, a social worker, and they divorced in 1990.
Wilson received many honorary degrees, including an honorary doctor of humanities from the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as a member of the board of trustees from 1992 until 1995.
Wilson got a best known Tony award and the New York circle of drama critics; he authored Ma Rainey's Black Bottom , and Joe Turner's Come and Gone .
In 1994, Wilson left Saint Paul and developed a relationship with Seattle repertory theatre. Ultimately, only Seattle repertory theater in the country produced all works in his ten-cycle and his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned .
Constanza Romero, his costume designer and third wife from 1994, bore Azula Carmen, his second daughter.
In 2005, August Wilson received the Anisfield-Wolf lifetime achievement award.
Wilson reported diagnosis with liver cancer in June 2005 with three to five months to live. He passed away at Swedish medical center in Seattle, and people interred his body at Greenwood cemetery, Pittsburgh on 8 October 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
September 3, 2019
Two Trains Running is a unique and pleasing play. Written a few years after the most intense and concentrated works of "The Pittsburgh Cycle," it is mellow, even autumnal, in its mood. Like Wilson’s other plays, it contains the materials of tragedy, but here his characters are less relentless, reality less intractable, and the promise of some kind of happiness—a muted, yet authentic happiness--is allowed to survive. It reminds me a little of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale: the calm after tragedy, the peace after pain.
The play centers around a restaurant in the Pittsburgh Hill District and the people who congregate there, including the hardworking owner Memphis, his waitress Risa, the numbers runner Wolf, old man Holloway, the prosperous undertaker and property owner Mr. West, Sterling, a volatile young man just out of prison, and Hambone, a brain-damaged man who repeats the same phrase over and over: “I want my ham. He gonna give me my ham.”
Perhaps the reason these characters survive is that, unlike many of Wilson’s characters— Troy Maxson in Fences, for example—Memphis, Sterling and the others learn to be content with what is possible. They have what Undertaker West would call a “little cup” as opposed to a “ten-gallon bucket” philosophy:
STERLING: I'm gonna get me two or three Cadillacs like you. Get Risa to be my woman and I'll be alright. That's all a man need is a pocketful of money, a Cadillac, and a good woman. That's all he need on the surface. I ain't gonna talk about that other part of satisfaction. But I got sense enough to know it's there. I know if you get the surface it don't mean nothing unless you got the other. I know that, Mr. West. Sometimes I think I'll just take the woman part. And then sometimes that don't seem like it's enough.
WEST: That's cause you walking around here with a tengallon bucket. Somebody put a little cupful in and you get mad cause it's empty. You can't go through life carrying a ten-gallon bucket. Get you a little cup. That's all you need. Get you a little cup and somebody put a little bit in and it's half full. That ten-gallon bucket ain't never gonna be full. Carry you a little cup through life and you'll never be disappointed. I'll tell you what my daddy told me. I was a young man just finding my way through life. I told him I wanted to find me a woman and go away and get me a ranch and raise horses like my grandaddy. I was still waiting around to find the woman. He told me to get the ranch first and the woman would come. And he was right. I never did get me the ranch, but he was right.
February 14, 2023
I have made it a lifelong reading goal to finish August Wilson’s century cycle of plays. Two Trains Running takes place in 1960s Pittsburgh at the height of the black power movement. The civil rights act has been passed but clearly African Americans are not enjoying the American dream to the fullest. It is still hard to find and keep employment and many rely on the numbers game in hope of making a big payout to make ends meet. Few people find honest work, like Memphis the restaurant owner and West the funeral home director. The rest turn to hustling and dream big, that one day things will be better. Malcolm X and Dr King are still lauded by many, who hope that one day as African Americans they will be offered the same rights as white folks. While this play takes place over 50 years ago, many of these issues are still at the forefront of society today. With the last three plays left to read, I remain intrigued as to how Wilson, a theatrical genius, depicted contemporary life.
4 stars
4 stars
January 3, 2024
If the train don’t hurry
there’s gonna be some walking done.
”People kill me talking about n——rs is lazy. Ni—-rs is the most hard working people in the world. Worked three hundred years for free. And didn’t take no lunch hour. Now all of a sudden ni—-rs is lazy. All of a sudden when they got to pay ni—-rs, ain’t no work for him to do. If it wasn’t for you the white man would be poor. Every little bit he got he got standing on top of you.”
Two Trains Running may just be my favorite of August Wilson’s Century Cycle of plays. It’s not his greatest play (Fences takes that honor). It didn’t win a Pulitzer like Fences or The Piano Lesson. But it is the most balanced between its portrayal of the harsh realities of being Black in America, and the resilience of its protagonist, each of whom found their own, unique style of survival in a hostile, uncaring world. It falls short of greatness because it’s not a true tragedy — it ends almost gently, with several protagonist getting something not unlike a happy ending. I’ll take it.
All the action of the play happens in a tiny diner on Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, in 1969. The city is about to tear it (and the rest of the block) down, and Memphis, the diner’s owner is fighting with the city to get full value for his property. He and his regulars discuss and banter about this, along with the huge funeral of the Prophet Samuel, laid out across the street, the numbers, and the upcoming rally in memory of Malcom X. Also sparking conversation is the daily visit of Hambone, a simple minded man whose only communication is repeating “I want my Ham. He’s gonna give me my ham.” Through these conversations, the regulars reveal their pasts, their struggles, life philosophies, and means of coping with a systematically unfair power structure.
Two Trains Running has a bitter-sweet ending, with more emphasis on the sweet. One patron gets a funeral, another pulls off a startling (though mostly symbolic) act of defiance, and yet another gets a rare but well deserved win. It is as close to a happy ending as you will find in this cycle of plays. It may not be Wilson’s greatest play, but I find it his most enjoyable.
there’s gonna be some walking done.
”People kill me talking about n——rs is lazy. Ni—-rs is the most hard working people in the world. Worked three hundred years for free. And didn’t take no lunch hour. Now all of a sudden ni—-rs is lazy. All of a sudden when they got to pay ni—-rs, ain’t no work for him to do. If it wasn’t for you the white man would be poor. Every little bit he got he got standing on top of you.”
Two Trains Running may just be my favorite of August Wilson’s Century Cycle of plays. It’s not his greatest play (Fences takes that honor). It didn’t win a Pulitzer like Fences or The Piano Lesson. But it is the most balanced between its portrayal of the harsh realities of being Black in America, and the resilience of its protagonist, each of whom found their own, unique style of survival in a hostile, uncaring world. It falls short of greatness because it’s not a true tragedy — it ends almost gently, with several protagonist getting something not unlike a happy ending. I’ll take it.
All the action of the play happens in a tiny diner on Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, in 1969. The city is about to tear it (and the rest of the block) down, and Memphis, the diner’s owner is fighting with the city to get full value for his property. He and his regulars discuss and banter about this, along with the huge funeral of the Prophet Samuel, laid out across the street, the numbers, and the upcoming rally in memory of Malcom X. Also sparking conversation is the daily visit of Hambone, a simple minded man whose only communication is repeating “I want my Ham. He’s gonna give me my ham.” Through these conversations, the regulars reveal their pasts, their struggles, life philosophies, and means of coping with a systematically unfair power structure.
Two Trains Running has a bitter-sweet ending, with more emphasis on the sweet. One patron gets a funeral, another pulls off a startling (though mostly symbolic) act of defiance, and yet another gets a rare but well deserved win. It is as close to a happy ending as you will find in this cycle of plays. It may not be Wilson’s greatest play, but I find it his most enjoyable.
February 19, 2024
"Two Trains Running" is set in 1969 Pittsburgh during the urban renewal of a poor black neighborhood. The late 1960s was a difficult time. Even though Civil Rights legislation had been passed, it did not lead to much advancement in the quality of life for black individuals. I was a little surprised that there was no mention about poor individuals, unable to afford college which gave a deferment, being drafted to serve in Vietnam.
Memphis runs a small restaurant which the city wants to buy, but he's unwilling to sell unless he gets a good price. The people coming into Memphis' restaurant are on the edge economically with little opportunity for employment, and many have been exploited by white society. Some turn to Prophet Samuel who is charismatic and may make them feel better psychologically, but he spends their offerings on expensive items for himself. Aunt Ester has been alive since the first Africans were brought to North America by slave traders, and other people seek her advice. When they follow her advice to throw some money in the river so heaven will give them abundant returns, it may be that feeling confident and good about themselves brings good luck. Some people bet on the numbers, hoping for a big payout from the crime family that runs the betting. It's doubtful that any of the three strategies will help, but maybe it's a psychological boost and a reason to hope.
They feel like they don't have the same access to the American Dream as white society. West's advice to Sterling about walking around with a small cup of dreams, instead of a ten-gallon bucket of expectations, says it all. A small amount of success will half fill a small cup, but won't be noticeable in a big bucket.
An older man, Holloway, was also frustrated by black poverty: "He give you three dollars a day for six months and he got him a railroad for the next hundred years. All you got is six month' worth of three dollars a day."
I found that there was more repetition in this play compared to others in August Wilson's Century Cycle, especially about Hambone wanting the ham for payment of his work painting a fence. While I enjoyed some of Wilson's other plays more, there is a lot to think about in this play--urban renewal, making changes, unemployment, injustice, lack of opportunity, death, and black leadership. 3.5, rounded up.
Memphis runs a small restaurant which the city wants to buy, but he's unwilling to sell unless he gets a good price. The people coming into Memphis' restaurant are on the edge economically with little opportunity for employment, and many have been exploited by white society. Some turn to Prophet Samuel who is charismatic and may make them feel better psychologically, but he spends their offerings on expensive items for himself. Aunt Ester has been alive since the first Africans were brought to North America by slave traders, and other people seek her advice. When they follow her advice to throw some money in the river so heaven will give them abundant returns, it may be that feeling confident and good about themselves brings good luck. Some people bet on the numbers, hoping for a big payout from the crime family that runs the betting. It's doubtful that any of the three strategies will help, but maybe it's a psychological boost and a reason to hope.
They feel like they don't have the same access to the American Dream as white society. West's advice to Sterling about walking around with a small cup of dreams, instead of a ten-gallon bucket of expectations, says it all. A small amount of success will half fill a small cup, but won't be noticeable in a big bucket.
An older man, Holloway, was also frustrated by black poverty: "He give you three dollars a day for six months and he got him a railroad for the next hundred years. All you got is six month' worth of three dollars a day."
I found that there was more repetition in this play compared to others in August Wilson's Century Cycle, especially about Hambone wanting the ham for payment of his work painting a fence. While I enjoyed some of Wilson's other plays more, there is a lot to think about in this play--urban renewal, making changes, unemployment, injustice, lack of opportunity, death, and black leadership. 3.5, rounded up.
August 4, 2017
Play #7 of August Wilson's Century Cycle, three more to go. As of this moment, Fences is still my favorite.
Favorite quote from this play: "You got love and you got death. Death will find you...it's up to you to find love." -Holloway
Favorite quote from this play: "You got love and you got death. Death will find you...it's up to you to find love." -Holloway
May 29, 2013
Wilson continues his quest to reinvent the play each time he writes one. He lays raw the ugliness of the era, which presses down on the characters more overtly than in some of his other plays (where the era tends to bleed in more quietly). Everything in Two Trains Running is high stakes, and it plays out in a high stakes era: 1969. Malcom X and King are dead; the civil rights era is in transition. With minimal space and numerous plot points and relationships to play out, Wilson is even more sparse--and somehow more sprawling. One of the most powerful scenes comes where Memphis details being run off his own farm--and watching white men kill his mule by gutting it in front of him, with the very real threat that he is likely next. The pointed, cold violence of hate--and the threat in it for Memphis--is palpable. One cannot hear this but fear for him, even though we're hearing him tell it of his own past; even though he is, after all, fiction. But the fear is real; and one wonders how he survived--that they didn't murder him; that he didn't get lost in a quest for vengeance.
Though the play's style is distinct, I recognized several (welcome) recurring themes. We have Holloway, the philosopher/Greek chorus. We have characters whose pasts have been wronged and packed with loss. And we have the disparate characters who have woven or are weaving a set of relationships and a place to belong. Like Jitney, that place is on the verge of being lost. But the whole play vibrates at a higher pitch; it lives in a tense, aggressive place.
The rest if my comments engage with the conclusion, so stop here if you don't want spoilers. Suffice to say that Wilson's talents do not fail him halfway through his cycle.
[SPOILERS]
It is the ending that makes this play beautiful--and it is beautiful because Wilson has earned it. There is a quotation that comes to mind from The Doctor Dances (again--because I'm so classy like that). It isn't a perfect fit (in fact, it seems downright odd for a book that features a funeral director as a main cast member, two funerals, and a memorial for an assassinated leader)--but it works.
Where Ma Rainey's conclusion was a slap across the face, here the inevitability of a similar ending practically shouts here. Nearly every scene, a conflict develops that could trigger loss, violence, unfairness--some combination thereof. Having read about Levee, one sees him on every page of Two Trains Running. There is Sterling, newly released from prison, anxious to make his way, volatile enough to be worrisome to the rest of the characters--and who won a lottery only to be given only half the expected winnings. There is Memphis, the owner of a once-thriving business, pigeonholed by a changing neighborhood, who refuses to sell his business in advance of the government's forcible procurement of his property because he will not accept less than $25,000 for it. There is Hambone, mentally ill man who showed up every day, hoping the man who once cheated him of a ham would make it right. Also, there is the wake and funeral of a pastor, who attracted a massive and potentially rowdy crowd of fans and detractors; the burning of a business for insurance and the speculation that it would be blamed on someone--possibly a member of the Black Panthers, who have made an appearance in the town. There are actual guns procured at points in the story. And of course, looming over (and underpinning) all of this, adding fuel to the conflicts, is the violent oppression that permeated the city in that era. It was an ugly time, and that tension broiled always in this story. It made me fear the unabashed hope and faith that Memphis, Hambone, and Sterling had that they, the righteous, would be vindicated. This was a time when the fighters were the first to be attacked. And I've read enough of Wilson now to know he does not pull punches against such hope. The tragedy, the fury, the final snapping point seemed unavoidable. Memphis would be screwed, by West or the government; Hambone will be imprisoned or falsely accused, Sterling will snap and end up back in the penitentiary. Or dead. Something had to give.
But then.
"Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"
It isn't quite true. Not everyone. But--everyone lived in that there was, in the end, vindication, and triumph, and peace. There was justice of a sort even for Hambone (who died, and for whom Sterling finally got the ham). It isn't sentimental or easy; how can it be, after the pages that came before, and the plays that came before? How can it be, after Levee? After all the people who had already died, or lost, or imprisoned? Nor does it undermine the threat they faced, the fear we felt for them. It is an eye in the storm; but it is one worth celebrating. The war rages around it. Wilson knows it and we know it. But just this once: just this once. And it is beautiful.
Though the play's style is distinct, I recognized several (welcome) recurring themes. We have Holloway, the philosopher/Greek chorus. We have characters whose pasts have been wronged and packed with loss. And we have the disparate characters who have woven or are weaving a set of relationships and a place to belong. Like Jitney, that place is on the verge of being lost. But the whole play vibrates at a higher pitch; it lives in a tense, aggressive place.
The rest if my comments engage with the conclusion, so stop here if you don't want spoilers. Suffice to say that Wilson's talents do not fail him halfway through his cycle.
[SPOILERS]
It is the ending that makes this play beautiful--and it is beautiful because Wilson has earned it. There is a quotation that comes to mind from The Doctor Dances (again--because I'm so classy like that). It isn't a perfect fit (in fact, it seems downright odd for a book that features a funeral director as a main cast member, two funerals, and a memorial for an assassinated leader)--but it works.
Where Ma Rainey's conclusion was a slap across the face, here the inevitability of a similar ending practically shouts here. Nearly every scene, a conflict develops that could trigger loss, violence, unfairness--some combination thereof. Having read about Levee, one sees him on every page of Two Trains Running. There is Sterling, newly released from prison, anxious to make his way, volatile enough to be worrisome to the rest of the characters--and who won a lottery only to be given only half the expected winnings. There is Memphis, the owner of a once-thriving business, pigeonholed by a changing neighborhood, who refuses to sell his business in advance of the government's forcible procurement of his property because he will not accept less than $25,000 for it. There is Hambone, mentally ill man who showed up every day, hoping the man who once cheated him of a ham would make it right. Also, there is the wake and funeral of a pastor, who attracted a massive and potentially rowdy crowd of fans and detractors; the burning of a business for insurance and the speculation that it would be blamed on someone--possibly a member of the Black Panthers, who have made an appearance in the town. There are actual guns procured at points in the story. And of course, looming over (and underpinning) all of this, adding fuel to the conflicts, is the violent oppression that permeated the city in that era. It was an ugly time, and that tension broiled always in this story. It made me fear the unabashed hope and faith that Memphis, Hambone, and Sterling had that they, the righteous, would be vindicated. This was a time when the fighters were the first to be attacked. And I've read enough of Wilson now to know he does not pull punches against such hope. The tragedy, the fury, the final snapping point seemed unavoidable. Memphis would be screwed, by West or the government; Hambone will be imprisoned or falsely accused, Sterling will snap and end up back in the penitentiary. Or dead. Something had to give.
But then.
"Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!"
It isn't quite true. Not everyone. But--everyone lived in that there was, in the end, vindication, and triumph, and peace. There was justice of a sort even for Hambone (who died, and for whom Sterling finally got the ham). It isn't sentimental or easy; how can it be, after the pages that came before, and the plays that came before? How can it be, after Levee? After all the people who had already died, or lost, or imprisoned? Nor does it undermine the threat they faced, the fear we felt for them. It is an eye in the storm; but it is one worth celebrating. The war rages around it. Wilson knows it and we know it. But just this once: just this once. And it is beautiful.
July 27, 2022
This one starts out so strong and builds tension beautifully but ultimately fizzled out. Some fantastic speeches and characters but the plot is lacking.
May 25, 2018
This was great. I want to read all of the plays in the cycle now. The characters are so unique and interesting. They are all appealing at some level and there is an incredible magic and romance to the setting
June 16, 2024
Another strong play in Wilson's Century Cycle. This is the seventh of the ten plays that I've gotten through. Two Trains Running is set in Pittsburgh in 1969. This is a pivotal time in the civil rights movement as Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated the year before and the non violence that King proposed has been questioned by new leaders such as Stokley Carmichael and the new leaders who are emerging in the Black Panther party. This play focus quite a bit on the economic realities of the African American experience in the late 60's. For most characters in the play, (with two notable exceptions) getting a decent wage to live off of seems an unlikely reality, despite their hard work due to the system being stacked against them. This is why one of the characters in the play, Wolf, is a numbers runner. This gives his clients an opportunity to come good, and despite the low odds, several characters are willing to chase after this dream.
Memphis is a restaurant owner in Pittsburgh's Hill District. The area has stagnated economically, and many businesses have already left. Memphis faces the prospect of having to sell off property as he doesn't get too many diners into his establishment. Memphis is pursued for his property by West, the one man who still prospers in the area, as a funeral operator. As characters in the play observe, death is one business that is always in vogue. One strength of Wilson as a playwright, is that he presents his characters as complex. We may not like West because he refuses to cut Risa a break when she is trying to honor Hambone and respect his dignity, but we also see that West has tried to help others in the community learn how to take economic responsibility. Sterling is the protagonist of the play. He is a young man who has served time in the local prison for theft. He wants to find a job, but not one that will be just menial with little pay. We see Sterling's attitude comes into conflict with Memphis, who as an older man thinks that Sterling should be happy for any job that he can get.
Sterling meets Risa, who is a waitress at Memphis's restaurant. Sterling likes Risa, but she is reluctant to get involved with a man who may just end up back in prison. Risa is used to men giving their attention to her, and to warn them off, she has taken the strict step of taking a razor to her legs to ward off men's advances. Holloway, an older man who comes into the restaurant tells the others about Aunt Ester, an older local lady who is able to help solve people's problems. She actually does not appear as a character in the play, but she is referred to often during the course of the play. She is the other character besides West who is not troubled by money woes.
I would say this is another very strong play in the Century Cycle. Of the seven plays I've read so far, I would rank them in this order. 1. Joe Turner's Come and Gone 2. Fences 3. Seven Guitars 4. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 5. Two Trains Running 6. The Piano Lesson 7. Gem of the Ocean
This series of plays are really well written and are worth working your way through!!
Memphis is a restaurant owner in Pittsburgh's Hill District. The area has stagnated economically, and many businesses have already left. Memphis faces the prospect of having to sell off property as he doesn't get too many diners into his establishment. Memphis is pursued for his property by West, the one man who still prospers in the area, as a funeral operator. As characters in the play observe, death is one business that is always in vogue. One strength of Wilson as a playwright, is that he presents his characters as complex. We may not like West because he refuses to cut Risa a break when she is trying to honor Hambone and respect his dignity, but we also see that West has tried to help others in the community learn how to take economic responsibility. Sterling is the protagonist of the play. He is a young man who has served time in the local prison for theft. He wants to find a job, but not one that will be just menial with little pay. We see Sterling's attitude comes into conflict with Memphis, who as an older man thinks that Sterling should be happy for any job that he can get.
Sterling meets Risa, who is a waitress at Memphis's restaurant. Sterling likes Risa, but she is reluctant to get involved with a man who may just end up back in prison. Risa is used to men giving their attention to her, and to warn them off, she has taken the strict step of taking a razor to her legs to ward off men's advances. Holloway, an older man who comes into the restaurant tells the others about Aunt Ester, an older local lady who is able to help solve people's problems. She actually does not appear as a character in the play, but she is referred to often during the course of the play. She is the other character besides West who is not troubled by money woes.
I would say this is another very strong play in the Century Cycle. Of the seven plays I've read so far, I would rank them in this order. 1. Joe Turner's Come and Gone 2. Fences 3. Seven Guitars 4. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 5. Two Trains Running 6. The Piano Lesson 7. Gem of the Ocean
This series of plays are really well written and are worth working your way through!!
October 17, 2020
Towards the end of this play, one of the wealthier characters, West, says, "You can't go through life carrying a ten gallon bucket. Get you a little cup. That's all you need. Get you a little cup and somebody put a little bit in and it's half full." The world will walk on you no matter who you are or what you look like. Might as well take the advice of the mortician who owns seven cars.
June 9, 2019
Another great and fascinating play in the Century Cycle. A great series of plays that if you are serious about plays in any way, you should read.
January 12, 2013
Chronologically, Two Train Running is the seventh in August Wilson’s ten play cycle on the African-American experience. Set in 1969, in Pittsburgh, of course, the play takes place in a restaurant owned by Memphis and worked by Risa. Customers include Wolf, who runs numbers, Sterling, who is fresh from the penitentiary and sweet on Risa, Holloway, who passes judgment on life and recommends the wisdom of the 320 year old Aunt Ester to all, West, who own the funeral parlor across the street, and Hambone, who speaks two lines compulsively throughout the play. The neighborhood is run down, the funeral parlor and the restaurant are two of only three businesses still operating and only the funeral parlor can be said to be thriving. Memphis intends to sell the building that houses his restaurant to the city; West would like to buy it from him. Sterling would like a job but is not above behavior that would put him back in jail, though he says that’s not the case. Memphis wants to take his money and go back down South and re-claim the property he was chased off of decades before. He still has the deed.
Society is in transition. Malcolm X has been dead for four years; Dr. King for a year. There is a paradoxical sense of guarded (or aggressive) possibility—to make something for yourself economically and/or demand your rights—in a community of surrounding decay. The ghost of Malcolm X, the prophecies of Aunt Ester, the religious hucksterism of a departed minister, the pragmatic day-to-day investments of businessmen, and the wishful thinking investments of quarters and dollars in the local numbers game all are resources for the play’s characters, some exclusively pursue one and some place their bets across the board. This cloudy, multi-faceted setting of hopes and illusions, past and present bleeding into future, decay and renewal, myth and history, religion and superstition is fundamental to Wilson’s cycle. As ever, Wilson peoples his play with vibrant, contentious, and complex characters who speak directly and bluntly about their lives, the world, and the chances life offers in this time and place. They get in each other's face with wit and, sometimes, menace, as the play does to its viewers or readers.
Society is in transition. Malcolm X has been dead for four years; Dr. King for a year. There is a paradoxical sense of guarded (or aggressive) possibility—to make something for yourself economically and/or demand your rights—in a community of surrounding decay. The ghost of Malcolm X, the prophecies of Aunt Ester, the religious hucksterism of a departed minister, the pragmatic day-to-day investments of businessmen, and the wishful thinking investments of quarters and dollars in the local numbers game all are resources for the play’s characters, some exclusively pursue one and some place their bets across the board. This cloudy, multi-faceted setting of hopes and illusions, past and present bleeding into future, decay and renewal, myth and history, religion and superstition is fundamental to Wilson’s cycle. As ever, Wilson peoples his play with vibrant, contentious, and complex characters who speak directly and bluntly about their lives, the world, and the chances life offers in this time and place. They get in each other's face with wit and, sometimes, menace, as the play does to its viewers or readers.
December 16, 2022
"he is in pain, wounded by all the cruel and cold ironies of life."
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i think this quote pretty much sums up the play.
- did not realise that this was part of a series before i finished it
- although i unfortunately did not connect with it, i thought it gave substance for considerable discussion on identity & race politics (specifically in the 1960s)
- particularly liked hambone's character
- i think my taste in plays is oddly specific -- for some reason i can never seem to enjoy anything if it wasn't written by either shakespeare or tennessee williams??
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i think this quote pretty much sums up the play.
- did not realise that this was part of a series before i finished it
- although i unfortunately did not connect with it, i thought it gave substance for considerable discussion on identity & race politics (specifically in the 1960s)
- particularly liked hambone's character
- i think my taste in plays is oddly specific -- for some reason i can never seem to enjoy anything if it wasn't written by either shakespeare or tennessee williams??
August 25, 2011
Two trains running 1969 is a script to a play with seven characters (Memphis, Wolf, Risa, Holloway, Sterling, Hambone, and west) this takes place in Pittsburgh, in the year 1969. The action of the play takes place in a restaurant in the beginning across the street from West’s funeral home. Each character is very interesting and kind of reminds me of “Death of a Salesman” because they all seem to meet up at one place, a restaurant, and discuss their problems relating money, woman, friends, or family. Risa seems very kind while Wolf and Memphis seem kind of obnoxious and blunt. This story is mainly about African Americans and how they fit in society and their experiences. They are dealing with African American culture and history in the twentieth century when racial conflict and the Vietnam War are occurring during this time, They invest their hopes in playing the numbers, and the central theme is the manner in which the poor urban black community reacted to the civil rights movement.
August 3, 2008
An anomaly in August Wilson's work, frankly. No "man wrestling with God" protagonist, no real dramatic tension... lively characters, to be sure, save for Risa, who is frustratingly two-dimensional and lacking in personality. Everything and everyone seems to be stagnating in the diner where the action takes place. Like a Black version of Cheers.
January 1, 2021
A wonderful play, a wonderful piece of August Wilson’s collection. A piece of American history, a piece of the Black American history and experience! I can hardly wait to put them together in my reading experience as I enter 2021!
April 24, 2023
I can't say that I know how I feel about this play yet -- oh wait I do...
In many ways, I found it a regression from his previous work, which could be just a tragic, but accurate depiction of the world for African-Americans during that time period, or just a story I found myself displeased with generally. For instance, take Sterling’s arc, a young man just released from prison–a sentence he earned from robbing a bank–which ends with him robbing Lutz’s meat store for the ham that Hambone had always wanted. This has me thinking that Wilson’s play is leaning more toward an ironic, brilliant tragedy. Especially because the entirety of Act 2 Scene 4, built up this trust between the reader and Sterling’s promise for redemption with Risa, just for it to fall apart in the very next scene. However, I felt that Memphis getting his thirty-five thousand dollars felt wrong. For the entire play, he’s yelled at Risa, Wolf, and Sterling for numerous reasons, whether for a plausible reason or without, his character was built on a foundation of anger and short-temperedness that I don’t feel should have been rewarded at the end of the play. This could very well have been a commentary on how the wrong people always end up on top, which would parallel the civil rights rally that was present in the background of the book, but personally, I would say that’s a bit of a stretch. Lastly, I think that Risa’s character, again being the sole female of an August Wilson play, had the worst character development. She had the youth of Rena, the mind of Bertha, but with none of the backtalk or personality. Despite her wanting an individual lifestyle, she decides to want to be Sterling’s “only cousin” (Wilson Act 2 Scene 4), which just felt wrong on so many levels. The entire play, I had been waiting for her big speech, like that of Ma Rainey or Rose Maxson, but it never came. Despite the play taking place in 1969, the most current Wilson has written, Two Trains Running might just be his most regressive play yet when it comes to female roles in literature. This again could also be chalked up to another ironic social commentary about how there’s never really been a progression in women’s rights, but at this point, I am tired of making excuses for the lack of character depth in the only female role in this play.
In many ways, I found it a regression from his previous work, which could be just a tragic, but accurate depiction of the world for African-Americans during that time period, or just a story I found myself displeased with generally. For instance, take Sterling’s arc, a young man just released from prison–a sentence he earned from robbing a bank–which ends with him robbing Lutz’s meat store for the ham that Hambone had always wanted. This has me thinking that Wilson’s play is leaning more toward an ironic, brilliant tragedy. Especially because the entirety of Act 2 Scene 4, built up this trust between the reader and Sterling’s promise for redemption with Risa, just for it to fall apart in the very next scene. However, I felt that Memphis getting his thirty-five thousand dollars felt wrong. For the entire play, he’s yelled at Risa, Wolf, and Sterling for numerous reasons, whether for a plausible reason or without, his character was built on a foundation of anger and short-temperedness that I don’t feel should have been rewarded at the end of the play. This could very well have been a commentary on how the wrong people always end up on top, which would parallel the civil rights rally that was present in the background of the book, but personally, I would say that’s a bit of a stretch. Lastly, I think that Risa’s character, again being the sole female of an August Wilson play, had the worst character development. She had the youth of Rena, the mind of Bertha, but with none of the backtalk or personality. Despite her wanting an individual lifestyle, she decides to want to be Sterling’s “only cousin” (Wilson Act 2 Scene 4), which just felt wrong on so many levels. The entire play, I had been waiting for her big speech, like that of Ma Rainey or Rose Maxson, but it never came. Despite the play taking place in 1969, the most current Wilson has written, Two Trains Running might just be his most regressive play yet when it comes to female roles in literature. This again could also be chalked up to another ironic social commentary about how there’s never really been a progression in women’s rights, but at this point, I am tired of making excuses for the lack of character depth in the only female role in this play.
June 10, 2021
August Wilson’s brilliant 10-play Century Cycle captures the black experience in America in the 20th century. Each play is set in a different decade, and muses on different themes of the black experience. Two Trains Running is chronologically the seventh play in the cycle.
The play takes place in 1969 in Pittsburgh. Memphis owns a restaurant in the Hill District. The entirety of the play takes place in this restaurant, with the restaurant itself as a symbol of the play’s larger theme. Various regulars enter each scene: Wolf (a bookie), Risa (a waitress), West (the owner of a funeral parlor), Hambone (a man with some mental/emotional disability causing him to only say the same things over and over), and Sterling (an ex-con who is trying to restart his life). Wilson uses each of these characters to express different struggles of African-American life in the turbulent 1960s. Memphis, for example, has been notified that his diner will be torn down as part of the city’s rebuilding project, and his anger at what he feels is too-low a sale price reflects the anger of the black community continually being undermined while the larger society and culture rebuild and evolve. Sterling’s search for a new life and his to-some-questionable ethics represents a generation of African-Americans willing to do what is needed to be done in order to forge new lives amidst change. Just brilliant framing by Wilson throughout.
In comparison to the other works of the Century Cycle, I think this lay works among the better of the plays thematically, but lacks the character connection and big moments of the other plays. Wilson’s prose is still strong throughout this play. Recommended.
The play takes place in 1969 in Pittsburgh. Memphis owns a restaurant in the Hill District. The entirety of the play takes place in this restaurant, with the restaurant itself as a symbol of the play’s larger theme. Various regulars enter each scene: Wolf (a bookie), Risa (a waitress), West (the owner of a funeral parlor), Hambone (a man with some mental/emotional disability causing him to only say the same things over and over), and Sterling (an ex-con who is trying to restart his life). Wilson uses each of these characters to express different struggles of African-American life in the turbulent 1960s. Memphis, for example, has been notified that his diner will be torn down as part of the city’s rebuilding project, and his anger at what he feels is too-low a sale price reflects the anger of the black community continually being undermined while the larger society and culture rebuild and evolve. Sterling’s search for a new life and his to-some-questionable ethics represents a generation of African-Americans willing to do what is needed to be done in order to forge new lives amidst change. Just brilliant framing by Wilson throughout.
In comparison to the other works of the Century Cycle, I think this lay works among the better of the plays thematically, but lacks the character connection and big moments of the other plays. Wilson’s prose is still strong throughout this play. Recommended.
April 28, 2014
From the Back Cover: "It is Pittsburgh, 1969, and the regulars of Memphis Lee's restaurant are struggling to cope with the turbulence of a world that is changing rapidly around them and fighting back when they can. The diner is scheduled ot be torn down, a casualty of the city's renovation project that is sweeping away the buildings of a community, but not its spirit. For just as sure as an inexorable future looms right around the corner, these people of "loud voices and big hearts: continue to search, to falter, to persevere, to hope. With compassion, humor, and a superb sense of place and time, Wilson paints a vivid portrait of the everyday lives in the shadow of great events, and of unsung men and women who are anything but ordinary."
I liked this play...it ended abruptly like THE PIANO LESSON, and, I think they were written around the same time because they feel similar. I liked the background of the Black Power movement and Malcolm X, and I especially liked that that background didn't have to become part of the plot...it was a part of the tone.
Favorite quotes: "Holloway: People kill me talking about niggers is lazy. Niggers is the most hard-working people in the world. Worked three hundred years for free. And didn't take no lunch hour. Now all of a sudden niggers is lazy. Don't know how to work. All of a sudden when they got to pay niggers, ain't no work for him to do. If it wasn't for you the white man would be poor. Every little bit he got he got standing on top of you. That's why he could reach so high. He give you three dollars a day for six months and he got him a railroad for the next hundred years. All you got is six months' worth of three dollars a day. Now you can't even get that. Ain't no money in niggers working. Look out there on the street. If there was some money in it...if the white man could figure out a way to make some money by putting niggers to work...we'd all be working. He ain't building no more railroads. He got them. He ain't building no more highways. Somebody done already stuck the telephone poles in the ground. That's been done already. The white man ain't stacking no more niggers. You know what I'm talking about, stacking niggers, don't you? Well, here's how that go. If you ain't got nothing...you can go out here and get you a nigger. If that one nigger get out there and plant something...get something out of the ground...even if it ain't nothing but a bushel of potatoes...then you got one nigger and one bushel of potatoes. Then you take that bushel of potatoes and go get you another nigger. Then you got two niggers. Put them to work and now you got two niggers and two bushels of potatoes. See, now you can go buy two more niggers. That's how you stack a nigger on top of a nigger. White folks got to stacking...and I'm talking about they stacked up some niggers! Stacked up close to fifty million niggers. If you stacked them on top of one another they make six or seven circles around the moon. It's lucky the boat didn't sink with all them niggers they had stacked up there. It take them two extra months to get here cause it ride so low in the water. They couldn't find you enough work back then. Now that they got to pay you they can't find you none. If this was different time wouldn't be nobody out there on the street. They'd all be in the cotton fields."
"Memphis: That's what half the problem is...these black power niggers. They got people confused. They don't know what they doing themselves. These niggers talking about freedom, justice, and equality and don't know what it mean. You born free. It's up to you to maintain it. You born with dignity and everything else. These niggers talking about freedom, but what you gonna do with it? Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder in it and hope you back hold up. And if you around here looking for justice, you got a long wait. Ain't no justice. That's why the got that statue of her and got her blindfolded. Common sense would tell you if anybody need to see she do. There ain't no justice. Jesus Christ didn't get justice. What makes you think you gonna get it? That's just the nature of the world. These niggers talking about they want freedom, justice, and equality. Equal to what? Hell, I might be a better man than you. What I look like going around here talking about I want to be equal to you? I don't know how these niggers think sometimes. Talking about black power with their hands and their pockets empty. You can't do nothing without a gun. Not in this day and time. That's the only kind of power the white man understand. They think they gonna talk there way up to it. If I tell you to get out of my yard and leave my apples alone, I can't talk you out. You sit up in the tree and laugh at me. But if you know I might come out with a shotgun...that be something different. You'd have to think twice about whether you wanted some apples.
These niggers around here talking about they black and beautiful. Sound like they trying to convince themselves. You got to think you ugly to run around shouting you beautiful. You don't hear me say that. Hell, I know I look nice. Got good manners and everything."
"Holloway: That's all you got. You got love and you got death. Death will find you...it's up to you to find love. That's where most people fall down at. Death got room for everybody. Love pick and choose. Now, most people won't admit that. They tell you they love this one and that one. Most don't even love their mother. You can see that by the way they treat her. But they'll tell you anything. But they got to know in their heart. I believe West loved his wife. And Bubba Boy loved his woman. Them's the only two people I can say found love. The rest of us play at it. That's cause love cost. Love got a price to it. Everybody don't want to pay. They put it on credit. Time it come due they got it on credit somewhere else. That's the way I see the world. That's what I done learned all these years."
I liked this play...it ended abruptly like THE PIANO LESSON, and, I think they were written around the same time because they feel similar. I liked the background of the Black Power movement and Malcolm X, and I especially liked that that background didn't have to become part of the plot...it was a part of the tone.
Favorite quotes: "Holloway: People kill me talking about niggers is lazy. Niggers is the most hard-working people in the world. Worked three hundred years for free. And didn't take no lunch hour. Now all of a sudden niggers is lazy. Don't know how to work. All of a sudden when they got to pay niggers, ain't no work for him to do. If it wasn't for you the white man would be poor. Every little bit he got he got standing on top of you. That's why he could reach so high. He give you three dollars a day for six months and he got him a railroad for the next hundred years. All you got is six months' worth of three dollars a day. Now you can't even get that. Ain't no money in niggers working. Look out there on the street. If there was some money in it...if the white man could figure out a way to make some money by putting niggers to work...we'd all be working. He ain't building no more railroads. He got them. He ain't building no more highways. Somebody done already stuck the telephone poles in the ground. That's been done already. The white man ain't stacking no more niggers. You know what I'm talking about, stacking niggers, don't you? Well, here's how that go. If you ain't got nothing...you can go out here and get you a nigger. If that one nigger get out there and plant something...get something out of the ground...even if it ain't nothing but a bushel of potatoes...then you got one nigger and one bushel of potatoes. Then you take that bushel of potatoes and go get you another nigger. Then you got two niggers. Put them to work and now you got two niggers and two bushels of potatoes. See, now you can go buy two more niggers. That's how you stack a nigger on top of a nigger. White folks got to stacking...and I'm talking about they stacked up some niggers! Stacked up close to fifty million niggers. If you stacked them on top of one another they make six or seven circles around the moon. It's lucky the boat didn't sink with all them niggers they had stacked up there. It take them two extra months to get here cause it ride so low in the water. They couldn't find you enough work back then. Now that they got to pay you they can't find you none. If this was different time wouldn't be nobody out there on the street. They'd all be in the cotton fields."
"Memphis: That's what half the problem is...these black power niggers. They got people confused. They don't know what they doing themselves. These niggers talking about freedom, justice, and equality and don't know what it mean. You born free. It's up to you to maintain it. You born with dignity and everything else. These niggers talking about freedom, but what you gonna do with it? Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder in it and hope you back hold up. And if you around here looking for justice, you got a long wait. Ain't no justice. That's why the got that statue of her and got her blindfolded. Common sense would tell you if anybody need to see she do. There ain't no justice. Jesus Christ didn't get justice. What makes you think you gonna get it? That's just the nature of the world. These niggers talking about they want freedom, justice, and equality. Equal to what? Hell, I might be a better man than you. What I look like going around here talking about I want to be equal to you? I don't know how these niggers think sometimes. Talking about black power with their hands and their pockets empty. You can't do nothing without a gun. Not in this day and time. That's the only kind of power the white man understand. They think they gonna talk there way up to it. If I tell you to get out of my yard and leave my apples alone, I can't talk you out. You sit up in the tree and laugh at me. But if you know I might come out with a shotgun...that be something different. You'd have to think twice about whether you wanted some apples.
These niggers around here talking about they black and beautiful. Sound like they trying to convince themselves. You got to think you ugly to run around shouting you beautiful. You don't hear me say that. Hell, I know I look nice. Got good manners and everything."
"Holloway: That's all you got. You got love and you got death. Death will find you...it's up to you to find love. That's where most people fall down at. Death got room for everybody. Love pick and choose. Now, most people won't admit that. They tell you they love this one and that one. Most don't even love their mother. You can see that by the way they treat her. But they'll tell you anything. But they got to know in their heart. I believe West loved his wife. And Bubba Boy loved his woman. Them's the only two people I can say found love. The rest of us play at it. That's cause love cost. Love got a price to it. Everybody don't want to pay. They put it on credit. Time it come due they got it on credit somewhere else. That's the way I see the world. That's what I done learned all these years."
July 21, 2017
I recently saw August Wilson’s Fences, on screen with Denzel Washington; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, at First Stage in Tysons Corner, Virginia; and have now read Two Trains Running, set in 1969 as part of Wilson’s Century Cycle.
Two Trains possesses all the eloquence and trapped intensity associated with Wilson’s finest work. This is African American speech, yes, but also simply American speech — comic, crude, soaring, self-mythologizing, and self-lacerating.
The main characters — restaurant owner Memphis, numbers runner Wolf, ex-con Sterling — bait and battle one another, but we soon understand that they are largely helpless witnesses to the powerful social changes happening around them. Yet despite the odds, they continue pursuing their individual dreams of success, money, and happiness. In other words, the American dream.
As in other Wilson plays, the “white man” is a baffling, malign, and usually unseen presence, referenced here by the mentally disabled Hambone, who can only repeat the line, “He gonna give me my ham,” alluding to a white man’s failure to pay for painting a fence.
The saddest figure, however, is Sterling, who is out of prison, unable to find a job, attracted to the promises of the black power movement, but equally enticed by the prospect of hitting the right numbers with Wolf. His dream: use the money to win over Risa, the restaurant waitress and cook, who is grimly realistic about Sterling’s actual prospects.
The play makes ample references to Malcolm X, black power, and Martin Luther King, but largely as distant objects of skepticism. Memphis and the others urgently hope for an escape from their present circumstances, but they seem to dismiss the possibility that any social or political movement could embody such hope.
“Freedom is heavy,” says Memphis, deriding Sterling’s wish to attend a black power demonstration. “You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back hold up.” But Memphis, at least, has the prospect of a payout for his restaurant when the city takes his property for redevelopment.
Sterling, far from acting as a proponent for black power in the play, flails from one dream to another. As the cynical funeral director West advises him, “That ten-gallon bucket ain’t never gonna be full. Carry you a little cup through life and you’ll never be disappointed.���
Intentional or not, Wilson’s characters embody a deep belief in individualism and personal freedom, even as they rage against the institutional racism that has trapped them at the bottom of the economic heap. Memphis may own his restaurant, but it is a poor establishment with beans and corn muffins for 65 cents and no alcohol. If Memphis has been touched by the civil rights struggles of his time, he refuses to recognize that it has made a difference in his life. Instead, flailing dreams, hustling, and hard-shell cynicism are the means for survival.
None of them, however, even Sterling, give up on their dreams. They survive, and their unyielding struggles become their nobility, their humanity, their deeply despairing yet utterly American story.
Two Trains possesses all the eloquence and trapped intensity associated with Wilson’s finest work. This is African American speech, yes, but also simply American speech — comic, crude, soaring, self-mythologizing, and self-lacerating.
The main characters — restaurant owner Memphis, numbers runner Wolf, ex-con Sterling — bait and battle one another, but we soon understand that they are largely helpless witnesses to the powerful social changes happening around them. Yet despite the odds, they continue pursuing their individual dreams of success, money, and happiness. In other words, the American dream.
As in other Wilson plays, the “white man” is a baffling, malign, and usually unseen presence, referenced here by the mentally disabled Hambone, who can only repeat the line, “He gonna give me my ham,” alluding to a white man’s failure to pay for painting a fence.
The saddest figure, however, is Sterling, who is out of prison, unable to find a job, attracted to the promises of the black power movement, but equally enticed by the prospect of hitting the right numbers with Wolf. His dream: use the money to win over Risa, the restaurant waitress and cook, who is grimly realistic about Sterling’s actual prospects.
The play makes ample references to Malcolm X, black power, and Martin Luther King, but largely as distant objects of skepticism. Memphis and the others urgently hope for an escape from their present circumstances, but they seem to dismiss the possibility that any social or political movement could embody such hope.
“Freedom is heavy,” says Memphis, deriding Sterling’s wish to attend a black power demonstration. “You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back hold up.” But Memphis, at least, has the prospect of a payout for his restaurant when the city takes his property for redevelopment.
Sterling, far from acting as a proponent for black power in the play, flails from one dream to another. As the cynical funeral director West advises him, “That ten-gallon bucket ain’t never gonna be full. Carry you a little cup through life and you’ll never be disappointed.���
Intentional or not, Wilson’s characters embody a deep belief in individualism and personal freedom, even as they rage against the institutional racism that has trapped them at the bottom of the economic heap. Memphis may own his restaurant, but it is a poor establishment with beans and corn muffins for 65 cents and no alcohol. If Memphis has been touched by the civil rights struggles of his time, he refuses to recognize that it has made a difference in his life. Instead, flailing dreams, hustling, and hard-shell cynicism are the means for survival.
None of them, however, even Sterling, give up on their dreams. They survive, and their unyielding struggles become their nobility, their humanity, their deeply despairing yet utterly American story.
Read
March 23, 2020I loved how there was so much storytelling in this play, and Wilson also introduces a lot more black nationalist ideas/anger towards the government's corruption and commitment to the economic suppression of black businesses. Not as much music in this play as in most of his others, but it introduced me to a new-to-me Aretha Franklin song, which is always a pleasure.
April 25, 2020
post-notes on Two Trains Running (4.26.2019)
OK. Just some random notes and thoughts after our group discussion to “close out” Two Trains Running.
Going through each character and his/her contribution(s) to the various plotlines was an interesting way to summarize the play and open up various lines of discussion. It was mentioned that outside his long monologue about “niggers and guns,” Holloway makes no mention of gun violence like some of the other characters. We spoke at some length about the possible causes of Hambone’s affliction and I think we agreed that the injustice he experienced may not have been sufficient cause for his obsessive fixation(s) in the play. “He gon’ give me my ham!” Upon Hambone’s death we learn that he had lots of cuts and scars on his body. That was connected to Risa’s cuts and self-mutilation, scarification rituals, etc., which led our discussion to the topic of anorexia. Sterling, it was noted, had a special connection to Hambone, and he also had a special connection, attraction to Risa. Risa was very sympathetic and caring with Hambone. The three, Risa, Hambone, and Sterling, formed a sort of mutual triad.
Wolf, the numbers runner, was pretty much a static character throughout. He has a special, though understated affection for Risa, always saying nice things to her and claiming to have a special knowledge of her among the menfolk. Equally, Wolf has a distaste for West and doesn’t want him handing his body when he dies. Memphis was connected in our discussion to Seth (in Joe Turner) and Caesar Wilkes (in Gem) as a self-made man. He was also described as often mean and cruel to both Hambone and to Risa and it was obvious he was hateful to his wife, though his own behavior towards her escaped his own awareness. The play directions say he has “impeccable logic,” and that may be Wilsonian tongue in cheek. Risa is referred to in the group as the Victorian heroine, long suffering, and angelic. She keeps the diner running and has no fear for her job, despite Memphis’s continuous complaints. She reminds me of Black Mary in Gem, enduring the constant flow of criticisms from Aunt Ester. And West, the undertaker, has a storied history, from petty crime and marginal living to upright and successful entrepreneurism. We postulated that his black gloves may be a cover for eczema or skin damage from embalming fluid. He pays “Mason” to guard his funeral parlor.
Now for some notes I took in the actual text.
Memphis is the father of four children. Still his wife left him. Memphis resents that Risa donates money to Prophet Samuel. A man named Zanelli runs the jukebox service. Sterling is “fresh” out of prison and that socialization is a big part of his personality. He is caught in a Catch-22 with regard to work and union membership in Pittsburgh. Holloway is a big advocate of Aunt Ester’s counseling services. He draws the link between Aunt Ester and Prophet Samuel. I scribbled in the margins, “Does Hambone represent blacks who demand reparations?” Memphis mentions a Mr. Stovall, also mentioned in The Piano Lesson. Early in Scene Two Memphis mentions “two trains running every day.” Holloway’s mention of “stacking niggers” reminds me of mass incarceration. It also brings to mind images of the middle passage, kidnapped Africans packed like sardines in the hull of slave ships. Memphis says “dead men don’t have birthdays” in reference to a Malcolm X celebration. Holloway points out the superiority of Aunt Ester to Malcolm X anyway. Sterling mentions the time he spent at Toner Institute. Memphis’s failure to understand the clause in his deed referencing eminent domain makes me question his level of literacy. Memphis’s monologue at the end of Act One is especially poignant and shows he is at least capable of deep feeling.
Hambone learns to say “United we stand,” but he never repeats “Malcolm Lives.” West mentions burying an elderly lady, Miss Sarah Degree, also mentioned in Seven Guitars and the person who provides home remedies. In real life, Sarah Degree was a lady in Wilson’s childhood who took neighborhood children to Sunday School and church. Wolf speaks of two lady friends he has in Atlanta and quotes, without attribution, Floyd Barton’s song, “That’s all right.” Risa says Prophet Samuel was “sent by God to help the colored people get justice.” Holloway believes in the supernatural. West tells Sterling to get a small cup instead of a ten-gallon bucket, advice that Wilson received from one of his mentors during his youth. Risa plays Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look on the juke box, dances with and kisses Sterling. Risa refuses to see Hambone in the casket, just as she refused to see Prophet Samuel, saying in both cases, “I don’t want to see him that way.”
notes on Two Trains Running (4.25.2019)
Looking for a different angle this reading.
I think i may find it before Friday morning! Some critics say Two Trains Running doesn’t capture the vitality of the 60’s the way, say, Fences captures the angst of the 50’s. I have to give that some thought. The play is set in 1969, after all the excitement of the 60’s, the greening of American, the civil rights activism, Woodstock, all that stuff has come and gone. Well, maybe not Woodstock. The Kennedy’s have been killed and there is no more hope for Camelot. King and Malcolm X have been killed and those dreams ended. I think by 1969 all the political fantasies are over and done with and people, a bit dazed, are just trying to find their way to some equilibrium, any steady state that will let them get on with their lives. I think this juncture is where Wilson has placed his 60’s play.
There is a passing reference to King, sandwiched in between long monologues about Malcolm X. Memphis says,
“They killed Martin. If they did that to him you can imagine what they do to me or you.”
Earlier he says of Malcolm X,
” Malcolm X is dead. Malcolm ain’t having no more birthdays. Dead men don’t have birthdays.”
And later he deconstructs the Freedom, Justice and Equality of the Nation of Islam by saying 1) freedom is heavy; 2) ain’t no justice; and 3) equality is a nonstarter because people are just not equal to one another. Then he adds a a crown to the Black is Beautiful movement by saying its followers sound as if they are trying to convince themselves their blackness is beauty.
Holloway has the solution. When asked why he didn’t become a Malcolm X follower in the early days of his preaching, Holloway responds that he didn’t need to as long as he knew the way to Aunt Ester’s.
That brings us to an important point in the play. Participation in the mass movements of the day is downplayed, and support for local leaders, like Prophet Samuel and Aunt Ester is highlighted. Risa has been paying tithes to Prophet Samuel’s church, not because she believes in some supernatural intervention, but because she believes Prophet Samuel helps people with legal issues on a day to day basis. Holloway recommends Aunt Ester because he can see a change she made in his relationship with his father. These are tangible benefits with certain payoff. Hambone wants his ham and he petitions for it daily with Mr Lutz. I think Memphis’ logic would say even Hambone has a better chance of achieving his objective than some others in the play.
In Scene Three, Sterling makes a reference to Toner Institute, a local orphanage where he grew up. Again, such a place really did exist. It provided a home/school environment to boys from broken or disruptive homes and remained in existence until 1977. In later years, enrollment shrunk along with county and state subsidies in a time of rising prices.
Then there is the ever-present issue of urban renewal breathing down the backs of not only the diner owner, Memphis, but all the folks for which the diner has become a type of second home. In most places where it was applied, urban renewal became a sort of pipe dream whose goals were never achieved. Long standing neighborhoods were destroyed, families were decimated along with institutions like churches, community centers, and businesses.
This all became a part of the overall environmental malaise of the late 60’s, which, it might be argued, is accurately depicted in the Wilson play. The title, Two Trains Running, may suggest that there are some options available, both in terms of mobility, upward or downward, and in terms of simple navigation. Memphis has a dream of going back south to reclaim his farm, but once he gets his compensation his focus changes to getting a bigger restaurant in a better commercial part of town. By the way, reflecting back on last week’s discussion, there is an indication that Memphis is functionally illiterate when, at the end of Act One, he makes mention of a clause in the deed to his property referencing eminent domain that he doesn’t really understand. Similarly, the deed to his property down south also had a “hidden” clause that perhaps was only hidden to him because he could not read.
Stovall is mentioned and I wonder is it the same Stovall as in The Piano Lesson? Also, Sarah Degree is mentioned and she was mentioned previously in Seven Guitars as the provider of home remedies to Hedley.
OK. Just some random notes and thoughts after our group discussion to “close out” Two Trains Running.
Going through each character and his/her contribution(s) to the various plotlines was an interesting way to summarize the play and open up various lines of discussion. It was mentioned that outside his long monologue about “niggers and guns,” Holloway makes no mention of gun violence like some of the other characters. We spoke at some length about the possible causes of Hambone’s affliction and I think we agreed that the injustice he experienced may not have been sufficient cause for his obsessive fixation(s) in the play. “He gon’ give me my ham!” Upon Hambone’s death we learn that he had lots of cuts and scars on his body. That was connected to Risa’s cuts and self-mutilation, scarification rituals, etc., which led our discussion to the topic of anorexia. Sterling, it was noted, had a special connection to Hambone, and he also had a special connection, attraction to Risa. Risa was very sympathetic and caring with Hambone. The three, Risa, Hambone, and Sterling, formed a sort of mutual triad.
Wolf, the numbers runner, was pretty much a static character throughout. He has a special, though understated affection for Risa, always saying nice things to her and claiming to have a special knowledge of her among the menfolk. Equally, Wolf has a distaste for West and doesn’t want him handing his body when he dies. Memphis was connected in our discussion to Seth (in Joe Turner) and Caesar Wilkes (in Gem) as a self-made man. He was also described as often mean and cruel to both Hambone and to Risa and it was obvious he was hateful to his wife, though his own behavior towards her escaped his own awareness. The play directions say he has “impeccable logic,” and that may be Wilsonian tongue in cheek. Risa is referred to in the group as the Victorian heroine, long suffering, and angelic. She keeps the diner running and has no fear for her job, despite Memphis’s continuous complaints. She reminds me of Black Mary in Gem, enduring the constant flow of criticisms from Aunt Ester. And West, the undertaker, has a storied history, from petty crime and marginal living to upright and successful entrepreneurism. We postulated that his black gloves may be a cover for eczema or skin damage from embalming fluid. He pays “Mason” to guard his funeral parlor.
Now for some notes I took in the actual text.
Memphis is the father of four children. Still his wife left him. Memphis resents that Risa donates money to Prophet Samuel. A man named Zanelli runs the jukebox service. Sterling is “fresh” out of prison and that socialization is a big part of his personality. He is caught in a Catch-22 with regard to work and union membership in Pittsburgh. Holloway is a big advocate of Aunt Ester’s counseling services. He draws the link between Aunt Ester and Prophet Samuel. I scribbled in the margins, “Does Hambone represent blacks who demand reparations?” Memphis mentions a Mr. Stovall, also mentioned in The Piano Lesson. Early in Scene Two Memphis mentions “two trains running every day.” Holloway’s mention of “stacking niggers” reminds me of mass incarceration. It also brings to mind images of the middle passage, kidnapped Africans packed like sardines in the hull of slave ships. Memphis says “dead men don’t have birthdays” in reference to a Malcolm X celebration. Holloway points out the superiority of Aunt Ester to Malcolm X anyway. Sterling mentions the time he spent at Toner Institute. Memphis’s failure to understand the clause in his deed referencing eminent domain makes me question his level of literacy. Memphis’s monologue at the end of Act One is especially poignant and shows he is at least capable of deep feeling.
Hambone learns to say “United we stand,” but he never repeats “Malcolm Lives.” West mentions burying an elderly lady, Miss Sarah Degree, also mentioned in Seven Guitars and the person who provides home remedies. In real life, Sarah Degree was a lady in Wilson’s childhood who took neighborhood children to Sunday School and church. Wolf speaks of two lady friends he has in Atlanta and quotes, without attribution, Floyd Barton’s song, “That’s all right.” Risa says Prophet Samuel was “sent by God to help the colored people get justice.” Holloway believes in the supernatural. West tells Sterling to get a small cup instead of a ten-gallon bucket, advice that Wilson received from one of his mentors during his youth. Risa plays Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look on the juke box, dances with and kisses Sterling. Risa refuses to see Hambone in the casket, just as she refused to see Prophet Samuel, saying in both cases, “I don’t want to see him that way.”
notes on Two Trains Running (4.25.2019)
Looking for a different angle this reading.
I think i may find it before Friday morning! Some critics say Two Trains Running doesn’t capture the vitality of the 60’s the way, say, Fences captures the angst of the 50’s. I have to give that some thought. The play is set in 1969, after all the excitement of the 60’s, the greening of American, the civil rights activism, Woodstock, all that stuff has come and gone. Well, maybe not Woodstock. The Kennedy’s have been killed and there is no more hope for Camelot. King and Malcolm X have been killed and those dreams ended. I think by 1969 all the political fantasies are over and done with and people, a bit dazed, are just trying to find their way to some equilibrium, any steady state that will let them get on with their lives. I think this juncture is where Wilson has placed his 60’s play.
There is a passing reference to King, sandwiched in between long monologues about Malcolm X. Memphis says,
“They killed Martin. If they did that to him you can imagine what they do to me or you.”
Earlier he says of Malcolm X,
” Malcolm X is dead. Malcolm ain’t having no more birthdays. Dead men don’t have birthdays.”
And later he deconstructs the Freedom, Justice and Equality of the Nation of Islam by saying 1) freedom is heavy; 2) ain’t no justice; and 3) equality is a nonstarter because people are just not equal to one another. Then he adds a a crown to the Black is Beautiful movement by saying its followers sound as if they are trying to convince themselves their blackness is beauty.
Holloway has the solution. When asked why he didn’t become a Malcolm X follower in the early days of his preaching, Holloway responds that he didn’t need to as long as he knew the way to Aunt Ester’s.
That brings us to an important point in the play. Participation in the mass movements of the day is downplayed, and support for local leaders, like Prophet Samuel and Aunt Ester is highlighted. Risa has been paying tithes to Prophet Samuel’s church, not because she believes in some supernatural intervention, but because she believes Prophet Samuel helps people with legal issues on a day to day basis. Holloway recommends Aunt Ester because he can see a change she made in his relationship with his father. These are tangible benefits with certain payoff. Hambone wants his ham and he petitions for it daily with Mr Lutz. I think Memphis’ logic would say even Hambone has a better chance of achieving his objective than some others in the play.
In Scene Three, Sterling makes a reference to Toner Institute, a local orphanage where he grew up. Again, such a place really did exist. It provided a home/school environment to boys from broken or disruptive homes and remained in existence until 1977. In later years, enrollment shrunk along with county and state subsidies in a time of rising prices.
Then there is the ever-present issue of urban renewal breathing down the backs of not only the diner owner, Memphis, but all the folks for which the diner has become a type of second home. In most places where it was applied, urban renewal became a sort of pipe dream whose goals were never achieved. Long standing neighborhoods were destroyed, families were decimated along with institutions like churches, community centers, and businesses.
This all became a part of the overall environmental malaise of the late 60’s, which, it might be argued, is accurately depicted in the Wilson play. The title, Two Trains Running, may suggest that there are some options available, both in terms of mobility, upward or downward, and in terms of simple navigation. Memphis has a dream of going back south to reclaim his farm, but once he gets his compensation his focus changes to getting a bigger restaurant in a better commercial part of town. By the way, reflecting back on last week’s discussion, there is an indication that Memphis is functionally illiterate when, at the end of Act One, he makes mention of a clause in the deed to his property referencing eminent domain that he doesn’t really understand. Similarly, the deed to his property down south also had a “hidden” clause that perhaps was only hidden to him because he could not read.
Stovall is mentioned and I wonder is it the same Stovall as in The Piano Lesson? Also, Sarah Degree is mentioned and she was mentioned previously in Seven Guitars as the provider of home remedies to Hedley.
August 11, 2017
Perhaps of all August Wilson's plays I have read, none has more clearly impressed me upon me a message about responsibility. It seems that through his play "Two Trains Running," Wilson argues that one is better off in life if one assumes responsibility for one's self than if one depended on luck or another person for success. Of all the characters in the play, two exemplify Wilson's position while the others rely solely on luck, it seems, or wait for a promise to be fulfilled.
February 7, 2017
Winter of Wilson, Part Four ...
Two Trains Running was shaping up as the cruelest Wilson play I'd read yet, until things got a bit of a twist at the end. However, from the scabs on Risa's legs to the murder of Memphis' mule, this is a play about deep cuts and old wounds still festering, and also about the grudges and injustices that can't quite be buried until they've had their day. It's a play about hoping for luck, betting on numbers and throwing money into rivers. It's a play about a generation caught between southern slavery and northern segregation. It's a play about the slow slide from bad to worse in the urban working-class African American community in 1960s Pittsburgh. Yet, as with all of the Wilson plays I've read so far, a bit of promise for change and renewal springs through, too.
Favorite Passage:
MEMPHIS: Ain't nothing wrong in saving your money and do like they do. These niggers just don't want to work. That boy don't want to work. He lazy.
HOLLOWAY: People kill me talking about niggers is lazy. Niggers is the most hard-working people in the world. Worked 300 years for free. And didn't take no lunch hour. Now all of a sudden niggers is lazy. Don't know how to work. All of a sudden when they got to pay niggers, ain't no work for him to do. If it wasn't for you the white man would be poor. Every little bit he got he got standing on top of you. That's why he could reach so high. He give you three dollars a day for six months and he got him a railroad for the next hundred years. All you got is six months' worth of three dollars a day.
Two Trains Running was shaping up as the cruelest Wilson play I'd read yet, until things got a bit of a twist at the end. However, from the scabs on Risa's legs to the murder of Memphis' mule, this is a play about deep cuts and old wounds still festering, and also about the grudges and injustices that can't quite be buried until they've had their day. It's a play about hoping for luck, betting on numbers and throwing money into rivers. It's a play about a generation caught between southern slavery and northern segregation. It's a play about the slow slide from bad to worse in the urban working-class African American community in 1960s Pittsburgh. Yet, as with all of the Wilson plays I've read so far, a bit of promise for change and renewal springs through, too.
Favorite Passage:
MEMPHIS: Ain't nothing wrong in saving your money and do like they do. These niggers just don't want to work. That boy don't want to work. He lazy.
HOLLOWAY: People kill me talking about niggers is lazy. Niggers is the most hard-working people in the world. Worked 300 years for free. And didn't take no lunch hour. Now all of a sudden niggers is lazy. Don't know how to work. All of a sudden when they got to pay niggers, ain't no work for him to do. If it wasn't for you the white man would be poor. Every little bit he got he got standing on top of you. That's why he could reach so high. He give you three dollars a day for six months and he got him a railroad for the next hundred years. All you got is six months' worth of three dollars a day.
March 24, 2017
This play is so on point, and also just so damned delightfully BLACK. Definitely something to add to the "Stay Woke" syllabus, especially because, unfortunately, the social zeitgeist has not changed much, it seems. LOVE IT. I also felt as though I was sitting around a bunch of my uncles, listening to them talk about life, love, spirituality, and politics. But what I love the most about Wilson's piece is that it is not only honest with a racially-divided society, but it's also really honest with itself and with Black people about the state of Black people.
But what I love the most about Wilson's piece is that it is not only honest with a racially-divided society, but it's also really honest with itself and with Black people about the state of Black people.
The character I connected with the most, strangely enough, was Hambone. His function as the "soul of Black folk" was super powerful for me in the play. The very perseverance of getting what one is owed, because he worked for it and was swindled out of it, and trying to reconcile society's debt to you is super powerful. At the same time, Wilson seems to also be making a counterargument via Hambone, that if you wait on another (even if he owes you) to give you your due, you'll not only be waiting forever, but you may just collapse in on yourself. It's surprisingly segregationist and nationalist in a sort of "reverse" way.
Loved this. OBVIOUSLY would love to produce this.
But what I love the most about Wilson's piece is that it is not only honest with a racially-divided society, but it's also really honest with itself and with Black people about the state of Black people.
The character I connected with the most, strangely enough, was Hambone. His function as the "soul of Black folk" was super powerful for me in the play. The very perseverance of getting what one is owed, because he worked for it and was swindled out of it, and trying to reconcile society's debt to you is super powerful. At the same time, Wilson seems to also be making a counterargument via Hambone, that if you wait on another (even if he owes you) to give you your due, you'll not only be waiting forever, but you may just collapse in on yourself. It's surprisingly segregationist and nationalist in a sort of "reverse" way.
Loved this. OBVIOUSLY would love to produce this.
April 26, 2014
This was the first play fron Wilson's "Century Cycle" that I've read, and I really can't give it more than three stars. One shouldn't take this as any indication of the type of work done by Wilson nor of the quality of his plays and this cycle. It's really more due to the fact that I'm new to the Wilson oeuvre and I'm still trying to adjust to his style. With O'Neill, Williams, Miller, and others, I'm familiar enough with their work to know what to expect - not so with Wilson. As I read the remaining plays in the cycle I may revisit this rating.
If there's one phrase I would use to summarize the story, it would be "hope in the face of hopelessness." Despite the horrible economic conditions being experienced by nearly all of the characters in 1969 Pittsburgh, there's still a bit of hope - hope that a job will appear, hope that the numbers being played will hit, hope that the woman to whom one is attracted will reciproacte his feelings, hope that completion of a job will be rewarded with the payment desired. It won't take you long to read this entire slim play to see how things work out for Risa, Sterling, Holloway, Hambone, Wolf, and West.
The middle-of-the-road rating I've given shouldn't discourage you from reading this play - it's a good, easy introduction to Wilson's work.
If there's one phrase I would use to summarize the story, it would be "hope in the face of hopelessness." Despite the horrible economic conditions being experienced by nearly all of the characters in 1969 Pittsburgh, there's still a bit of hope - hope that a job will appear, hope that the numbers being played will hit, hope that the woman to whom one is attracted will reciproacte his feelings, hope that completion of a job will be rewarded with the payment desired. It won't take you long to read this entire slim play to see how things work out for Risa, Sterling, Holloway, Hambone, Wolf, and West.
The middle-of-the-road rating I've given shouldn't discourage you from reading this play - it's a good, easy introduction to Wilson's work.
July 17, 2011
In the time when African Americans were still struggling against the lingering aftereffects of their oppression, a group of African Americans who hang around in a restaurant in Pittsburgh are dealing with their own problems. There's Memphis: the town wants to buy out his restaurant, and he's trying to fight to earn more money from it. There's Wolf, who has no family who cares for him and is too busy taking bets for people. The other characters also have motives of their own. Throughout the story, it is evident that the relationships between characters form and change.
This book was something new because I generally don't read plays. It was an interesting experience and led to me being more interested in reading various plays. The dialogue between the characters was good. However, I didn't always follow what the characters were saying because of the fact that they were occasionally talking about old-fashioned ideas, like their form of betting at the time. I thought the plot was interesting and it kept me reading until the end. Although the book is short, it is packed with interesting events and a good plot that makes the play seem complete at the end.
This book was something new because I generally don't read plays. It was an interesting experience and led to me being more interested in reading various plays. The dialogue between the characters was good. However, I didn't always follow what the characters were saying because of the fact that they were occasionally talking about old-fashioned ideas, like their form of betting at the time. I thought the plot was interesting and it kept me reading until the end. Although the book is short, it is packed with interesting events and a good plot that makes the play seem complete at the end.
January 25, 2013
I keep getting struck by the economic desperation of Wilson's plays. His characters either have no money and little opportunity to gain any, or they are cheated and/or exploited out of the little money and opportunity they have. This leads to many of his plays inhabited by hustlers, thieves, and gamblers, characters operating on the economic fringe. Ultimately, the "mentally simple" Hambone symbolizes their economic condition. Cheated out of the payment of a ham for the job of painting a fence, his repetitive "I want my ham, he gonna give me my ham," becomes symbolic, reminding us of a number things. His labor is stolen, not unlike his slave ancestors. He dwells in an economy rigged against him. And perhaps most significantly, much like Boy Willie from the Piano Lesson, he refuses to give up pursuing a just compensation for his labor.
Looking forward to seeing a production of this next summer!
Looking forward to seeing a production of this next summer!
Read
February 4, 2011I think it's about Urban-Renewal in the 1960s as well as black aspirations vs racial prejudice in jobs, education and housing.
You probably think it's about black males demanding recognition from white males because the characters: Hambone (goes crazy from asking to be paid what he was promised by a white butcher (he is never paid – he just dies alone)) Memphis (demands to be paid what he thinks his restaurant building is worth from a city trying to claim it for a redevelopment project, and wishes he could demand back the farm he was forced off of 40 years ago) and Sterling (wants to be paid by the bookies who cut his pay-out even when he won the bet, and civil rights rallys)
No one seems to think it’s about female struggles: Risa is openly mistreated by men demanding just treatment. She just takes it and does self-mutilation.
You probably think it's about black males demanding recognition from white males because the characters: Hambone (goes crazy from asking to be paid what he was promised by a white butcher (he is never paid – he just dies alone)) Memphis (demands to be paid what he thinks his restaurant building is worth from a city trying to claim it for a redevelopment project, and wishes he could demand back the farm he was forced off of 40 years ago) and Sterling (wants to be paid by the bookies who cut his pay-out even when he won the bet, and civil rights rallys)
No one seems to think it’s about female struggles: Risa is openly mistreated by men demanding just treatment. She just takes it and does self-mutilation.
May 26, 2022
Set in a restaurant on a block that's about to be destroyed by the city, we get the low down on the denizens of this neighborhood. With Wilson's inimitable blunt style, this play puts you in the restaurant and into the lives of it's inhabitants, the town, and the world. August Wilson's African-American play cycle is the most astonishing collective piece of work out there. Each play stands on it's own as brilliant writing, drama/comedy, and together they form a history of America that is beautifully rendered, with all of it's love, ugliness, truth and beauty.
Re-read this one in honor of it's 30th Anniversary. My original reviews sums it up beautifully. The really sad thing is that EVERY statement and observation in this play, set in 1967, is unfortunately, still true today. It's a sad statement that nothing has changed in 55 years!
Re-read this one in honor of it's 30th Anniversary. My original reviews sums it up beautifully. The really sad thing is that EVERY statement and observation in this play, set in 1967, is unfortunately, still true today. It's a sad statement that nothing has changed in 55 years!
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