Royal Treat: King Hedley II

by Jan Aaron

August Wilson’s King Hedley II, directed by Marion McClinton (Jitney), plays more like an opera than a play. Lovely, long lyrical aria-like discussions of past grudges, life’s injustices, abandonment and other frustrations, and how they scar generations, hurtle the characters toward inevitable destinies.

“You can’t play in the chord God ain’t wrote,” says Stool Pigeon (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a gentle neighbor. “He wrote the beginning and end. He let you play around with the middle.” An installment in Wilson’s decade-by-decade history depicting African American experience in the 20th century, King Hedley II is set in Wilson’s hometown, Pittsburgh, in 1985, though it has little to do with the eighties.

King (a name, not a title) Hedley (Brian Stokes Mitchell) is just out of prison for murdering a man. He is named for a man he believes to be his father, who also murdered a man. Mitchell’s wonderful baritone voice (lately the lead in Kiss Me Kate) lends the proper operatic feel to his impassioned monologues. Abandoned earlier by his mother Ruby (Leslie Uggams), he now lives with her in a rundown row house with his new wife Tonya (the excellent Viola Davis). “Life’s got its own rhythm. It don’t always match up with your rhythm,” Ruby tells the pregnant Tonya.

Visitors to their home are Hedley’s associate partner in his future planned video store and current scam, Mister (Monte Russell), and Ruby’s ex-boyfriend and con artist, Elmore (Charles Brown), who plans to marry her and also is inexplicably determined to tell Hedley his true parentage.

Much is made of the seeds Hedley plants to get something to grow out of the old dirt, but he learns nothing from these symbols of new life. Speaking of his murder he says: “The next one ain’t gonna cost me nothing.” Two guns and a bloody machete also figure into the plot, foretelling the play’s tragic ending.

King Hedley II is a lesser Wilson play. But is rewarding both for its powerful images and sympathetic showcase for people only he depicts on stage.

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