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, tofalter, 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.
