Esther Hopkins is a retired scientist and attorney who lives in Framingham where she currently serves on the Board of Selectmen. Kay Ritter is a marketing communications consultant who lives in Marlborough. Both are members of the First Parish in Framingham, Unitarian Universalist. They saw August Wilson's King Hedley II at Boston's Huntington Theater this spring. The play is the eighth in Wilson's major project -- a chronicle of the African-American experience in the 20th century with a play for each decade.
The play has a website, www.kinghedley.com

Whatever our race, whatever our age, whatever our background, and as much as we like to deny it, we all carry around "truths" within our belief systems that really are stereotypes. In King Hedley II playwright August Wilson presents us with the stereotypical characters that we think we know so well, and then he has an uncanny way of turning each of these into a distinctive human being -- a real person complete with dreams, disappointments, frustrations, and fatal flaws.

We share our contrasting perspectives -- two reviewers, close friends, suburban women, one Black, who came of age in the 1940s; and the other white, who came of age in the late 1950s. The first, most obvious, difference between us was in our reactions to the language. Esther, the older of us, was clearly uncomfortable with the free use of profanity; the language would strengthen negative stereotypes of African Americans among the largely white and elderly audience at the Sunday matinee performance we attended. The other of us was more accustomed to salty language, and felt that it was appropriate to the time and place and the characters. Was it that as a white person she was insensitive to the discomfort of an African-American? Was age a factor? Or class? Perhaps all three.

Esther recalls that "years ago, Momma and the other ladies from the local Black Baptist church whispered, nodded their heads, and cluck-clucked about 'those people' almost as if they could make them not exist. They meant the people who flaunted their bodies and flashy clothes, who spent what money they earned, or badgered, on booze and gambling, craps and women. These people who sang bluesy songs generally acted like 'no 'count n____s.' The church ladies did not want young people -- their young people -- to know, associate with, or be like 'those folk.'"

But those people were real. Just as are the people August Wilson portrays in King Hedley II, and in his other dramas. Wilson tells their stories. In this play the setting is the 1980s, a time when many thought great strides were being made by some segments of society and that optimistic view was the focus of the media. The Bill Cosby Show portrayed a vision of African-American life that mainstream America had never seen. White fans were accepting African-American sports figures and celebrities as never before. The media were telling us that our race troubles were over. The reality was that the divisions in society between the haves and the have-nots were becoming more extreme. And gang violence was increasing at unprecedented levels.

Wilson tells of the hurts and frustrations of people with insufficient income. In long soliloquies, he tells of the deep anguish that flows from societal rejection and isolation, and from not having a chance to get a first leg up. He tells about the first inklings of recognition as a person, the first sign of respect; and he tells of the despair that manifests itself in boozing and hanging out.

This is not an easy drama. The characters are big and bold, and the often-long speeches wash over you in huge torrents. Wilson uses symbolism that may initially seem superficial; but the people, the struggles, the symbols keep coming back to haunt long after the play is over.

King Hedley II has taken a life, but he longs to give life, to nurture it. He is determined, in spite of all the obstacles. When his lonely flower seed starts to grow, he is strengthened; when it is trampled on, he surrounds it with barbed wire. He is determined! If only he could surround his wife and expected child with barbed wire.

As the drama unfolds we get to know each person through their exposition on the motives behind their actions. The individuals are trying to find that one missing link between the life they want and the life they are dealt. The tragedy is that in each case, the link is elusive. Each looks to the others for support, but ultimately they don't hear each other. The differences in their thinking only bring them to greater tragedy.

This play has a richness from which important insights can be gained. Even with our differing reactions, or perhaps because of them, we recommend it to you.

-- from a review by Scott Cummings in the Boston Phoenix, May 18-25, 2000

Each new Wilson play goes through a lengthy gestation tour that makes a number of regional stops before reaching New York. At the Seattle Repertory Theatre last August, King Hedley II had an all-star staged reading featuring Laurence Fishburne and Danny Glover. Its official premiere came in December at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre, where it inaugurated the theater's brand-new downtown facility. That production opened in March back at the Seattle Rep before heading east to the Huntington. From Boston, the show heads to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Goodman Theatre in Chicago (where again it will inaugurate a brand new theater), the Kennedy Center in DC, and finally, in the spring of 2001, to New York.

No other playwright in the USA enjoys this kind of extended and coordinated development path. This is not a tour of a finished production. "With each stop," explains Wilson, "there is a rehearsal process. I am blessed in that I have the opportunity to sit there and watch the play and go, 'Oh, I see! If I do this, then the audience will understand that better.' The play that I end up with, I believe, will be significantly different and better than the original Pittsburgh production."