The souls of Black folk hover over the land of the prosperous free in the North, and the oppressed, Black, peonage-dependent, economically impoverished of the South in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, currently at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre through July 26, 2026. The revival of Wilson’s second play in his 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle that highlights the Black American experience across each decade of the 20th century is superbly directed by Debbie Allen. The monumental drama stars acting heavyweights Cedric The Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson. Additionally, Wilson scholar, director, playwright and actor, Ruben Santiago Hudson, takes a bravura acting turn as Bynum Walker, the root worker, spiritual divine and linchpin upon which the play’s action turns. The production is a rare treat striking up powerful emotional resonances as the actors bring home Wilson’s characters in all their heartfelt glory and revelation.

The play’s setting is 1911, Pittsburgh’s Hill District, where the lively, humorous, ersatz, social critic of Black southerners, Seth Holly (Cedric the Entertainer), and his nurturing, “keep-Seth-in-line” wife Bertha (Taraji P. Henson), get along and prosper as best as they can. The solid, 25-year-married couple run a boarding house taking in folks who find their way north from the civil rights negating Jim Crow South. The wanderers include Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd), Jeremy Furlow (Tripp Taylor), Mattie Campbell (Nimene Sierra Wureh), Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone) and his daughter Zonia (Savanna Commodore the evening I saw the play). The unstated assumption (if you know your history) is that they are compelled by oppression and circumstance to migrate north toward hope and employment opportunity which has been denied them by southern states’ race laws that stripped their rights and returned them to various forms of bondage, especially after Plessy v Ferguson (1896).

Allen’s vision for the play encompasses a stylized reality for the well appointed kitchen and parlor of the large boarding house first floor with a long wooden-finished staircase going up to the second floor. Stylized in the background are symbols of bustling industrialization and progress (bridges, buildings, industries) surrounding the Hill district (David Gallow’s set design ) over-shadowing the Hollys boarding house as reminders of opportunity in the expanding city. With Stacey Derosier’s accompanying lighting design, at times with a sun setting many hued sky, there is a meld of backlit darkening skyline contrasting with the homely, secure boarding house interior that provides shelter, comfort and meals to those passing through.

Wilson familiarizes us with the cultural history of Back Americans with his representative character types who strike out looking to settle into a new form of freedom, seeking to bind their personal progress with the building boom happening in northern cities like Pittsburgh. These wayfarers only alight for a time at the Holly boarding house, leaving by the play’s conclusion. The exception is Santiago-Hudson’s Bynum Walker, who remains as a long-time boarder and quasi friend of Seth and Bertha, though Seth doesn’t like Bynum’s root working. Seth’s focus on prosperity and getting ahead in life is the antithesis of Bynum’s spiritual perspective. The humorous interplay between the two men represents the tension between the material and spiritual worlds and stirs the forward momentum in the play’s development as we meet Black characters who need physical sustenance and spiritual guidance and wisdom.

Wilson introduces Bynum’s spiritual import when he shares a story about “finding his song” (his purpose in life), directed to it by a “shiny man” who radiated light and opened Bynum’s understanding about life. Afterward, Bynum experiences a visitation with his father who had passed, and receives divine wisdom from him. Because of this epiphany, Bynaum redefines himself as a “conjure man” who binds people to their “song,” (purpose). Bynum, too, is looking for a new form of freedom, but unlike the others he acutely straddles the material and spiritual worlds and seeks spiritual freedom. He wants to find the “shiny man” again from whom he will receive another revelation. It is Bynum’s ability to perceive the things of the spirit, to negotiate the gap between the physical and spiritual realms, between life and death, that helps a few of the characters on their journey to a new identity in the North.

For each of the characters, the Holly boarding house is a way station, a symbol of impermanence and financial instability until they can stand on their own. For example, Wureh’s sweet Mattie Campbell seeks help from Santiago-Hudson’s Bynum. He works the roots to help her find her man who dumped her, giving her wise counsel that she may be better off without him. Like a charm she ends up with guitar playing, road construction worker Jeremy, but it doesn’t last when Boyd’s fashionably dressed, elegant Molly shows up, stays a week, and entices Jeremy away from Mattie. The forlorn Mattie can’t stop Jeremy flirting with Molly as Bertha looks on disapprovingly. Eventually, Jeremy dumps Mattie for the haughty Molly, who will probably dump Jeremy for another fellow with more money who can keep her in better style. It seems everyone who stays for a time at the Hollys is searching, but none more determined than Joshua Boone’s Herald Loomis.

Boone’s sinister, quiet Loomis pays money to the Hollys for room and board for himself and his daughter Zonia. He hopes to find his wife Martha (Abigail Onwunali) who he believes may be in the area. Seth takes his money with suspicion and Bertha treats him and Zonia kindly, but Cedric The Entertainer’s Seth criticizes Loomis behind his back. He wants him to leave as soon as his week is up because he fears trouble. Seth suspects Loomis did some crime and is dangerous. It doesn’t help that the mysterious Loomis says little about himself and doesn’t mingle with the others, though 11-year-old Zonia and young neighbor Reuben Scott (Jackson Edward Davis) become friendly, and she expresses love and faith in her father’s goodness.

However, the few times Loomis gathers with the others proves to be stressful for him. At the conclusion of Act I, he becomes enraged at the group dancing and chides them about calling the Holy Spirit. As he goes to leave, he has a spiritual revelation that takes him violently as he speaks in tongues. Bynum guides Loomis through his vision. He speaks a metaphoric prophesy about Blacks coming up out of the water in a mighty wave as they receive the breath of new life and stand on their own and walk away on various roads. However, Loomis struggles to get up and is unable to stand and join the others as the lights dim on him ending the act.

Allen’s mesmerizing scene is dynamic and moving. The dramatic portrayals by Santiago-Hudson and Boone keep one spellbound, drawn to Loomis’ prophecy as the scene ends at a high point of revelation. Loomis sees the impact of the Black migration as a wave that covers the land, but he is unable to join it. His legs are too paralyzed to get up and walk. We wonder why?

In Act II Seth questions’ Loomis’ claims to be a church deacon, convinced he’s “not right.” When he tries to get Loomis to leave, Loomis reminds Seth of the money he paid for the second week. Loomis must wait for Rutherford Selig (Bradley Stryker) a people finder, to bring him word of his wife Martha. Seth, who is frightened and annoyed about Loomis’ spiritual “carrying on” intends to throw him out. Only Bertha can calm him down. Meanwhile, Loomis’ prophecy unfolds as Molly and Jeremy take off and Loomis shows an interest in Mattie.

By degrees Wilson converges Seth’s truth that something isn’t right about Loomis with Bynum’s spiritual sensitivity about the former deacon. When Loomis flips out hearing Bynum sing “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,”Bynum confronts Loomis about being “one of Joe Turner’s ni$$ers.” The lyrics relate to the disappearance of Black men kidnapped for the peonage system (which was supposedly illegal, but whose law was not enforced until the 1940s). When they didn’t return home, family or friends would say, “Joe Turner’s come and gone.

Bynum’s sensitivity and second sight is spot on. Boone’s Loomis reveals the story about himself, Zonia and Martha. We learn that Loomis was snatched up off the streets (kidnapped illegally) by Joe Turner, the Tennessee governor’s greedy brother who had Black men charged for any pretext (walking on the wrong side of the street) to force them onto a chain gang without due process to pay off their “crime/debts.” Most probably Joe Turner gets kick backs for his Black labor supply who do not resist or do at their own peril. Loomis was in bondage/slavery for seven years, while his baby daughter grew up with his mother until he was freed went to her.

Loomis’ story is tragic. He not only loses his wife, position in the church and happy family life, he loses his dignity, humanity, freedom and person-hood. Worse, he is robbed by Joe Turner of his self-love and peace. However, Bynum tells him that there is something the racist could never rob him of, which plants a seed of hope that comes in handy when Looms meets Onwunali’s Martha.

What emerges is beautifully acted by Boone, Santiago-Hudson, Onwuali and the ensemble is the play’s central theme about the trauma of racial hatred, the brutality and inhumanity of Jim Crow’s hell and the soul damage it causes. Is one able to recover, stand up and walk away from that physical, emotional and spiritual torment, or is one paralyzed by the hatred and abuse for life? Will Loomis be an angel or a devil, as he confronts Martha which he does in the last scene, suspended between heaven and hell, bondage and freedom, life and death?

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone runs 2 hours 20 minutes through July 26, 2026 at the Barrymore Theater, Manhattan; joeturnerbway.com..